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210 conscious of acute nervousness. "It is more than good of you."

"It is good of you to grant me so much pleasure," he returned, sinking gracefully upon a settee, as Phil Abingdon resumed her seat. "Condolences are meaningless. Why should I offer them to one of your acute perceptions? But you know—" the long, magnetic eyes regarded her fixedly—"you know what is in my heart."

Phil Abingdon bit her lip, merely nodding in reply.

"Let us then try to forget, if only for a while," said Ormûz Khân. "I could show you so easily, if you would consent to allow me, that those we love never leave us."

The spell of his haunting voice was beginning to have its effect. Phil Abingdon found herself fighting against something which at once repelled and attracted her. She had experienced this unusual attraction before, and this was not the first time that she had combated it. But whereas formerly she had more or less resigned herself to the strange magic which lay in the voice and in the eyes of Ormûz Khân, this morning there was something within her which rebelled fiercely against the Oriental seductiveness of his manner.

She recognized that a hot flush had covered her cheeks. For the image of Paul Harley, bronzed, gray-eyed, and reproachful, had appeared before