at it feels like to miss me."

The process of "clearing out" was accomplished by the acceptance of an
invitation to cruise for a week with an aunt of May Van Raalt. There was
to be a gay party of young people aboard. It was the most natural thing
in the world for Belinda to wish to go.

When, however, she told Morris, during their afternoon ride, that Sophy
had consented to this outing, he seemed to regard it as not only a
highly absurd idea but as a personal affront. In fact he was so
outrageously ill-tempered about it that Belinda was in inner ecstasies
at the sureness of her "inspiration." "If he's like this before I even
start, what _will_ he be like by the time I come back?" she thought
gleefully.

She set off on the day appointed, in high spirits, all the higher
because Morris had refused to shake hands at parting and called her a
"shallow gad-about."

But he was shortly to rest in amazement before the fact of how
excessively he cared. Everything seemed strangely flat without her. He
missed her provocative teasing ... the singing of his blood at her look
and touch. The constant, thrilling struggle with temptation. One
certainly "lived" every atom of the time that one spent near Linda. She
kept existence at high-pressure. One could almost _see_ the little
"nigger squat on the safety-valve" of her pleasure-craft, by George! But
then, too, she was such bully fun to ride with and romp with. Nothing
highbrow about Linda. All the same he wasn't going to let her make a
fool of him. But, by George! she was the sort one missed--confound
her!----

The day after Belinda's departure he was again in the full swing of his
old tippling habit. To do without the stimulants both of drink and
Belinda he found beyond him. But even this remedy proved vain. The
flatness left by her absence was not to be dispelled so easily. The
thought of her dogged him night and day.

With Sophy his intercourse was very restricted. On the occasions that
the conventional exigencies of their life brought them together he
treated her with an aloof and ceremonious politeness. But this manner
was not now so much the result of displeasure as of a growing
indifference.

The thought of Belinda was such an obsessing flame that all other facts
of his existence had become like shadows, Sophy among them. He craved
the girl's return so fiercely that he had no coolness of imagination
left with which to regard anything but that desired and immediate
future