* * * * *

For Paul the evening was a dismal failure. Try as he would, he could not
catch Opal's eye again, nor secure more than the most meagre replies
even to his direct questions. She was too French to be actually
impolite, but she interposed between them those barriers only a woman
can raise. She knew that Paul was mad for a word with her; she knew that
she was tormenting and tantalizing him almost beyond endurance; she felt
his impatience in every nerve of her, with that mysterious sixth sense
some women are endowed with, and she rejoiced in her power to make him
suffer. He deserved to suffer, she said. Perhaps he'd have some idea of
the proper respect due the next girl he met! These foreigners! _Mon
Dieu_! She'd teach him that American girls were a little different from
the kind they had in his country, where "what men want, they take," as
he had said. What kind of heathen was he?

And she watched him surreptitiously from under her long lashes with a
curious gleam of satisfaction in her eyes. She had always known she had
this power over men, but she had never cared quite so much about using
it before and had been more annoyed than gratified by the effect her
personality had had upon her masculine world.

So she smiled at the Count, she laughed with the Count and made eyes
most shamelessly at the disgusting old gallant till something in his
face warned her that she had reached a point beyond which even her
audacity dared not go.

Heavens! how the old monster would _devour_ a woman, she thought, with a
thrill of disgust. There were awful things in his face!