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16 which could haunt a man with their tenderness or coax him to share in their mirth. He fancied from that moment that there were distinctly two of Miss Corliss, the one God made her, the one she was making herself. Amplifying that impression he hazarded the opinion that God could do a better job here than could Miss Corliss. There was nothing like letting good-enough alone. Her eyes, to conclude with them before his attention travelled elsewhere, she was forcing to appear matter-of-fact, business-like … cool. The thermic adjective on which he had hit at the beginning was the proper one. In it perhaps lay the key to an understanding of that rivalry between the young woman herself and the powers which had made her what she had found herself. That contest was one over the matter of soul-temperature. Steele's opinion … still tentative of course and precarious … was that her destiny at the outset had been one of warmth and sunniness, and that of her own volition she was reconstructing herself into a being who would rather freeze a man than thaw him. He remembered Booth Stanton's obvious discomfiture and chuckled reminiscently.

Miss Corliss was lifting her brows at him. He hastily noted that she was very young though so poised, that her mouth was made to be kissed though she did not suspect the fact, and at last spoke.

"I have discovered," said William Steele pleasantly, "the suspicion of a dimple."

He had wondered if her brows could go still higher. Now he knew that they could. He knew, too, that she could freeze a man quite as he had foreseen that she