This sumptuous creature, this Eve just within the gate of an untried Paradise, untutored in the ways of the world, but on tiptoe to reach the fruit of the tree of knowledge,--alive to the moist vitality of that warm atmosphere palpitating with voices and music, as the flower of some dioecious plant which has grown in a lone corner and suddenly unfolding its corolla on some hot-breathing June evening, feels that the air is perfumed with strange odors and loaded with golden dust wafted from those other blossoms with which its double life is shared,--this almost over-womanized woman might well have bewitched him, but that he had a vague sense of a counter-charm.

It was, perhaps, only the same consciousness that some one was looking at him which he himself had just given occasion to in his partner.

Presently, in one of the turns of the dance, he felt his eyes drawn to a figure he had not distinctly recognized, though he had dimly felt its presence, and saw that Elsie Venner was looking at him as if she saw nothing else but him.

He was not a nervous person, like the poor lady-teacher, yet the glitter of the diamond eyes affected him strangely.

It seemed to disenchant the air, so full a moment before of strange attractions.