win your man again. And when you have won the last victory, when
you can find no more to win, then ends love. Finis is written,
and your man wanders in strange gardens. Remember, love must be
kept insatiable. It must have an appetite knife-edged and never
satisfied. You must feed your lover well, ah, very well, most
well; give, give, yet send him away hungry to come back to you
for more."

Mrs. Higgins stood up suddenly and crossed out of the room. Saxon
had not failed to note the litheness and grace in that lean and
withered body. She watched for Mrs. Higgins' return, and knew
that the litheness and grace had not been imagined.

"Scarcely have I told you the first letter in love's alphabet,"
said Mercedes Higgins, as she reseated herself.

In her hands was a tiny instrument, beautifully grained and
richly brown, which resembled a guitar save that it bore four
strings. She swept them back and forth with rhythmic forefinger
and lifted a voice, thin and mellow, in a fashion of melody that
was strange, and in a foreign tongue, warm-voweled, all-voweled,
and love-exciting. Softly throbbing, voice and strings arose on
sensuous crests of song, died away to whisperings and caresses,
drifted through love-dusks and twilights, or swelled again to
love-cries barbarically imperious in which were woven plaintive
calls and madnesses of invitation and promise. It went through
Saxon until she was as this instrument, swept with passional
strains. It seemed to her a dream, and almost was she dizzy, when
Mercedes Higgins ceased.