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She listened to each word intently, her face neither flushed nor paled. She spoke very deliberately: “I—your wife, Mr. Frost? No. You interest me, but if I care for you, there is something that mars its fullness. Forgive me for saying it plainly, but I do not love you.”

“But, little woman, you cannot but awaken to it sometime. It is a heart of stone that will not warm to the touch of such love as mine. Love is dependent upon contact; we are only the wires through which the current throbs—lifeless before they are touched, and listless when sundered.”

He attempted to take her in his arms, but she slipped from his embrace, and naively replied, “If that’s your theory, there’s one remedy: I’ll break your circuit.”

“Was there ever such a tangle of weakness and strength in woman?” he asked himself. He bit his lips and marvelled; he had again been thwarted. Pretty soon he leaned heavily on the table, and looked the embodiment of despair.

“What makes you so gloomy?” asked Cherokee, sweetly.

“Because I am a lost and ruined man. I never felt quite so alone and friendless.”