"One cannot pay for such things," she said to him, meeting his look
firmly and steeling herself to thank him. Though deeply grateful, it was
a trial beyond telling to be obliged to owe the debt of a life to any
one, and in particular to a man of the sort to whom material gifts could
not be given.

"Such things are paid for just by accepting them," he answered quickly,
trying to feel that he had never held her in his arms, as she evidently
desired him to feel. He had intuition, if not enough of it, for the
regions where the mind of Fleda Druse dwelt.

"I couldn't very well decline, could I?" she rejoined, quick humour
shooting into her eyes. "I was helpless. I never fainted before in my
life."

"I am sure you will never faint again," he remarked. "We only do such
things when we are very young."

She was about to reply, but paused reflectively. Her half-opened lips
did not frame the words she had been impelled to speak.

Admiration was alive in his eyes. He had never seen this type of
womanhood before--such energy and grace, so amply yet so lithely framed;
such darkness and fairness in one living composition; such individuality,
yet such intimate simplicity. Her hair was a very light brown, sweeping
over a broad, low forehead, and lying, as though with a sense of modesty,
on the tips of the ears, veiling them slightly. The forehead was classic
in its intellectual fulness; but the skin was so fresh, even when pale as
now, and with such an underglow of vitality, that the woman in her, sex
and the possibilities of sex, cast a glamour over the intellect and