because she obviously excelled in the feminine art of inviting
display of charm. To glance at her was to realize at once the
beauty of her figure, the exceeding grace of her long back and
waist. A keen observer would have seen the mockery lurking in
her light-brown eyes, and about the corners of her full red lips.

She arranged her thick dark hair to make a secret, half- revealed
charm of her fascinating pink ears and to reveal in dazzling
unexpectedness the soft, round whiteness of the nape of her neck.

Because you are thus let into Miss Hastings' naughty secret, so
well veiled behind an air of earnest and almost cold dignity, you
must not do her the injustice of thinking her unusually artful.
Such artfulness is common enough; it secures husbands by the
thousand and by the tens of thousands. No, only in the skill of
artfulness was Miss Hastings unusual.

As the long strides of the tall, slender man brought him rapidly
nearer, his face came into plain view. A refined, handsome face,
dark and serious. He had dark-brown eyes--and Miss Hastings did
not like brown eyes in a man. She thought that men should have
gray or blue or greenish eyes, and if they were cruel in their
love of power she liked it the better.

``Hello, Dave,'' she cried in a pleasant, friendly voice. She
was posed--in the most unconscious of attitudes-- upon a rustic
bench so that her extraordinary figure was revealed at its most
attractive.

The young man halted before her, his breath coming quickly--not