imperious scornfulness with which he had looked upon the judge, the jury, and the bar under the excitement his speech on her behalf had generated. Strong, subtle, and secure as he had been in the exercise of his specific and audacious talent, this siren was equally so in hers. He had delivered a great prostitute from the gallows in order that she might lead him to it.
"I came here with no thought of destroying you," she said.
With perfect composure she proceeded to divest herself of her hat and coat, and carried them confidently behind the curtain, as though already she were perfect mistress of his house. When she returned she seated herself in the chair against the fire.
Northcote had not protest to raise. He could not meet the challenge in the eyes of Medusa. In their baleful lustre he had read the abrupt limit to his own imperious will, he beheld as through a mirage the prefiguration of his own doom. Even as he had conquered others by the fearlessness of his own quality, he had himself been conquered by the fearlessness of hers. He was no common advocate, but this was no common harlot. Prayer and devotion alone could have saved him from toils such as these; but of prayer and devotion he no longer commanded the use. There was a fissure in his armor; and through that aperture, small as it was, the deadly, unnamable thing that had crawled into his room had been able to plant its look.
"I am trying to think," said his visitor, as she reclined in the chair with her elbows outspread and her hands clasped behind her hair, which was pro-
