"Not until I choose to go, my dear." [Illustration: "Well, what do you want?
What are you doing here ?"] Suddenly changing her manner, she smiled with deliberate, mocking humor.
While he watched, she moved leisurely to a deep, many-cushioned couch; and, arranging the pillows, reclined among them in the careless abandonment of voluptuous ease and physical content.

Openly, ostentatiously, she exhibited herself to his burning gaze in various graceful poses--lifting her arms above her head to adjust a cushion more to her liking; turning and stretching her beautiful body; moving her limbs with sinuous enjoyment--as disregardful of his presence as though she were alone.

At last she spoke in cool, even, colorless tones; "Perhaps you will tell me what you want ?" The wretched victim of his own unbridled sensuality shook with inarticulate rage.

Choking and coughing he writhed in his chair--his emaciated limbs twisted grotesquely; his sallow face bathed in perspiration his claw-like hands opening and closing; his bloodless lips curled back from his yellow teeth, in a horrid grin of impotent fury.

And all the while she lay watching him with that pitiless, mocking, smile.