IN TAKING leave of Ackerman Stella went immediately to her room to select her dress and plan her campaign for John Graham’s reception in the evening.

A feeling of reaction depressed her. The passionate warmth and tenderness of his love remained a haunting memory. A sense of loneliness crept into her heart. She began to see that she was playing a desperate game with the great stake of a human life as the issue. The consciousness of its possible tragedy began to be dimly felt. She sat staring idly at the gowns she had piled on the big tester bed without being able to make a selection.

“I’ve begun a daring task,” she mused. “The wit and beauty of a girl of twenty against the iron will and personality of a man of genius. A man just entering his thirtieth year, who has looked Death in the face on the field of battle and dared defy the power of the Government that has crushed him. Can I win?”

The closer she had drawn to John Graham in their intimate daily association the more impossible seemed the idea that such a man could have murdered her father or known of such a crime. And yet the closer each day drew the net of circumstantial evidence about him and the fiercer grew her determination to demand the life of the murderer.

What had surprised her most of all in his character was the spirit of eternal youth within him—youth strong, fresh, buoyant and throbbing with poetic ideals. At first she had thought him sombre and morose, yet in his presence she could never imagine him more than twenty years of age. In many of his little ways and moods she found him more boy than man. And she must acknowledge the truth—she had begun to think of his possible death as a criminal with a pang of regret.

She rose and studied her beautiful figure in her mirror until self and pride once more filled the universe.

“Bah! What to me is the life of the man who struck my father dead at my feet! I’ll amuse myself by playing the game of love with him for a week, and then for the master-stroke. I’ll watch him as a cat a mouse, and when I’m ready, strike to kill. If he had no mercy, I shall have none.”

John found her in a mood of elusive girlishness. When he begged her to remember her parting words, the half-pledged promise of a message for which he waited, she only laughed and fenced.

She allowed him to call each afternoon and evening for a week until he was drunk with the joy of her presence—until the sense of personal intimacy and the growing consciousness of comradeship had made his will obedient to her slightest whim. It amused her to watch the growth of his powers of intuition, born of this daily life, which enabled him to anticipate her wishes.

For the man, these days were as water to the lips of a thirsty dreamer. In the heart of the girl, who studied his every movement with deep sinister purpose, there had grown a cruel joy in the consciousness of the tyranny she wielded over a powerful human life.

Toward the end of the week he began to beg her tenderly for a single word of love. At last she promised him an answer on the evening following, and forbade his afternoon call. She knew the effect of his longer absence would be to give her greater power. At last she was sure that the hour had struck toward which she had moved with such infinite pains, the hour of his complete surrender and his utter trust, when she had but to breathe her wish to know the guarded secrets of the Klan and they would be whispered into her ear without a moment’s hesitation.

She had planned to lead him to the seat amid the shadows of the trees near the house from which Isaac said he had watched the dance the night of the tragedy, and if possible gain both important secrets at once.

She again selected the low cut white chiffon she wore the night he had declared his love.

Maggie’s keen eyes watched her dress with a care never shown before. The little black maid flashed her white teeth more than once behind her back as she observed the delicate yet sure art with which, by a touch here and there, her mistress managed to suggest with unusual daring the physical charms of her extraordinary beauty. When the task was finished and she surveyed her form in her mirror with a look of proud content, Maggie laughed:

“You sho’ is trying ter kill ’im to-night!”

“Maggie, how dare you suggest such a thing!”

“De Laws a mussy, Miss Stella, I des mean dat you’se de purtiest thing in de whole worl’ an’ he gwine drap dead quick as he sees ye!”

“That will do, Maggie,” she said severely.

“Yassum.”

But in spite of her severity, the mistress smiled at the maid, and Maggie burst into a fit of laughter. When at length it subsided, she stood with wide staring worshipful eyes gazing at Stella entranced.

“Ef I could look lak dat, Miss Stella, I’d let ‘em bile me in ile, roast me on a red-hot stove and peel me!”

“You are breaking the Ten Commandments, Maggie.”

“Yassum, I’d bust a hundred commandments ef I could look lak you.”

“I accept the compliment, if I can’t commend your morals.”

“Yassum.”

A sudden flash of lightning revealed the clouds of a rapidly approaching summer storm.

Stella frowned.

“It’s going to storm,” she said, fretfully,

“Yassum, but he’ll come.”

The mistress laughed in spite of herself.

“I’m not worrying about his coming, Maggie.”

“Nobum, you needn’t worry. He swim er river ef he couldn’t git here no odder way—dar he is now!”

His familiar knock echoed through the hall and the maid hastened to open the door.

When Stella stood before him, John seized both her hands and looked into her deep eyes with silent rapture.

“How glorious you are to-night!” he whispered passionately.

She made no answer save the sensitive smile of triumph which lighted her face and qu............