Page:The council of seven.djvu/296

 Colossus was able to read her thought. To him the human mind was an open page. Looking deep into those honest eyes he smiled at the naked terror that he saw there. With a softness more than feline he began to stroke the delicate fabric of crêpe de chine that so inefficiently covered her. "If I ask you to put your arms about my neck and kiss me, what will you do?" Not by the lips was that speech uttered, but by eyes that glowed and burned like those which glow and burn in jungle grass.

She tried again to get away. But with the flick of a paw he cast her back to her cushions and held her. "One can never understand," he purred with an odd gentleness whose effect upon her was as wine and music, "why a creature of your intelligence, and particularly a woman, should ever truly believe that Right must triumph and Wrong must fail."

"One does believe it, all the same."

His laugh drove the blood from her heart. "And that is so amazing! Look at this horrible world we live in for our sins, and tell me quite honestly if there is any evidence at all of a power more benign than an impersonal, blind, animal force? The wind blows, the clouds rain, the stars shine. Some of us who are geared high smoke big cigars and own newspapers; some of us, geared not so high, are women broken in body and soul, whose daughters are on the streets and whose sons have been condemned by the State to the battue. So much, my dear girl, for this God of yours! On this