gray and rather serious and well set under long straight
brows, gave her a look of honesty and intelligence.
But the charm that won men, her charm of charms,
was her mouth--mobile, slightly pouted, not too narrow,
of a wonderful, vividly healthy and vital red. She
had beauty, she had intelligence. But it was impossible
for a man to think of either, once his glance had
been caught by those expressive, inviting lips of hers,
so young, so fresh, with their ever-changing, ever-
fascinating line expressing in a thousand ways the
passion and poetry of the kiss.

Of all the men who had admired her and had edged
away because they feared she would bewitch them into
forgetting what the world calls ``good common sense''
--of all those men only one had suspected the real
reason for her physical power over men. All but Stanley
Baird had thought themselves attracted because she
was so pretty or so stylish or so clever and amusing to
talk with. Baird had lived intelligently enough to
learn that feminine charm is never general, is always
specific. He knew it was Mildred Gower's lips that
haunted, that frightened ambitious men away, that
sent men who knew they hadn't a ghost of a chance
with her discontentedly back to the second-choice
women who alone were available for them. Fortunately
for Mildred, Stanley Baird, too wise to flatter
a woman discriminatingly, did not tell her the secret
of her fascination. If he had told her, she would no
doubt have tried to train and to use it--and so would