"So was Cleopatra, my friend. So was Helen of Troy. So were ... Circe and Faustina."
"But they," he laughed, "did not wield kindly the power of their eyes."
Mary Burton winced, then she turned and faced him. Her voice trembled.
"Why did I have to meet you tonight? It isn't fair! They have schooled my brain into every useless vanity. They have fed my selfishness until it has strangled my heart. Never until today did I face the truth. All afternoon I've been sitting alone--hating myself. I am nothing but an artificial little flirt, and I have not obeyed your injunction." She paused, then hurried on with the forced manner of one resolved upon full confession! "Perhaps so far I've hurt only myself--but I've done that--mortally. Then you come and I learn that you've woven an illusion about me--and I destroy it."
Jefferson Edwardes smiled in the dark, but spoke gravely.
"You call yourself an artificial little flirt. You haven't flirted with me. Why?"
"With you I have talked ten minutes." She laughed suddenly as though at some absurd thought. "Besides, did any woman ever flirt with you? Can one lie to eyes that see through one?"
"My eyes do see something," he said. "They see that you have never had a chance to be your real self. You have been surrounded by flatterers and sycophants, when you needed sincere and truthful friends."
"Truthful friends!" She repeated the words after him incredulously. "I wonder if such things exist."
"I am one," he announced bluntly. "I am going to give back to you the message your hills gave me--without flattery and without adjectives."
He came a step nearer and an unaccountable wave of attraction and fear thrilled her--flooded her heart until her temples burned. She had been wishing for the coming of a man who would not be clay in her hands. To Circe all men must have been swine, from the start, save the man who could pass by. Now, of a sudden, every wile of coquetry became a lost art to Mary Burton. She felt like an accomplished and intriguing diplomat, facing an adversary who has no secrets to conceal and no interest in the evasions of others. He roused a new eagerness because she knew intuitively that to mere fascination he would surrender no principle. With the realization came a sense of surprise and exaltation and timidity, and she spoke slowly with an interval between her words.