"It ain't fair to coax an innocent into _your_ sort of
game and fleece him of his little all."

She laughed--beautiful white teeth, cruel like her red lips. "It's all
true--all he told you," she replied. "All true, on my honor."

Every season Washington's strange mixture of classes and conditions and
nations furnishes at least one sensation of some kind or other. But,
used as I am to surprises until they have ceased to surprise, this took
me quite aback. "Do you love him, Nadeshda--really?"

She quite closed her eyes and said in a strange, slow undertone:
"He's my master. The blood in my veins flowed straight from the
savage wilderness. And he comes from there, and I don't dare disobey
him. I'd do anything he said. And when we're married I'll never
glance at another man--if he saw methat she
shouldn't and nothing that she should."

"Perhaps that's what makes them so irresistible," said Cyrus.

"Irresistible to flirt with and to _flaner_ about with," said Mrs.
Fortescue reproachfully. "But I'm sure you wouldn't marry one of them,
Mr. Burke."

"Oh, I don't know," he answered. "No doubt it does spoil a good
many, being so free and associating with experienced men who've been
brought up in a very different way. But"--he hesitated and blushed
uncomfortably--"it seems to me that those who do come through all right
are about the best anywhere. If a girl has any really bad qualities
anywhere in her they come out here. And if a Washington girl does marry
a man--for himself--and I rather think they make marriages of the heart
more than most girls in the same sort of society in other cities--don't
you, Miss