longing.

Would she feel insulted, he wondered, had she known he had dared to
compare her, even in his own thoughts, with a king's mistress? He meant
no insult--far from it! But would she have understood it had she known?

Paul fancied that she would.

"They may not have been moral, those women," he thought, "that is, what
the world calls 'moral' in the present day, but they possessed power,
marvellous power, over men and kingdoms. Opal Ledoux was created to
exert power--her very breath is full of force and vitality!"

"Yes," he repeated aloud after due deliberation, "I'll risk the bad luck
if you'll be good tome!"

"Am I not?"

"Not always."

"Well, I will be to-day. See! I have a new book--a sad little
love-tale, they say--just the thing for two to read at sea," and with a
heightened color she began to read.

She had pulled her deck-chair forward, until she sat in a flood of
sunshine, and the bright rays, falling on her mass of rich brown hair,
heightened all the little glints of red-gold till they looked like
living bits of flame. Oh the vitality of that hair! the intense glow of
those eyes in whose depths the flame-like glitter was reflected as the
voice, too, caught fire from the fervid lines!