Hshes of Incense 77

nutely studying her happiness, and now, the day before she is to come here and visit us, you come and make this awful—this cruelly suspicious charge against Michael! Mr. Templewaite, I can’t believe it of you!” Like a sorrowful, avenging fairy, she stood regarding him.

“I don’t make a charge against him,” returned Guy, also standing. “I simply say that for Paula —for a person of her highly impressionable na- ture—he is a very dangerous man. And I came here not to tell you my suspicions, but to ask you while Paula is here to help her avert that danger. To be with her, with them, as much as possi- ble ”

“Ah! I see. It was to warn me against your wife, then, that you came!” As though instinct- ively, Dorofée brushed her rose-sprigged skirts away from the table he was touching. “You came to rouse my suspicions-—against that poor, beau- tiful, gifted creature who has been so much— such an infinity-—to Michael! You wish me to follow them about, to spy upon them. I am sorry for you, Mr. Templewaite,”——her small figure stiffened majestically—-“you have come to the wrong person.”

“I see I have,” said Guy rigidly, taking up his hat; “I can only hope that you will be as wholly