Persian poet and what he says of his friend:

'A book of verses underneath the bough,
A loaf of bread, a jug of wine, and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness,
The wilderness were paradise enow.'

Ah, that is more my notion of friendship, of the ideal of friendship,
the thing that makes Paradise of the desert."

He got up quickly and stood before her, speaking hoarsely and quickly.

"It does not matter what you call it," he said. "I know what you mean. I
call it love, that is all--Jeannie, Jeannie----"

He seized both her hands in his roughly, brutally almost, and covered
them with kisses.

"Ah, it is done!" said Jeannie quickly, and half to herself. Then she
rose too, and wrenched her hands from him.

"Have you gone mad?" she said. "Stand out of my way, please."

But she had not reckoned on the strength of the passion she had raised.
For one moment he looked at her in blank astonishment, but he did not
move. She could not get by him without violence. Then he advanced a step
again towards her, as if he would have caught her to him. Jeannie put
both her arms in front of her; she had turned pale to the lips.

"Not till you have told me----"

"I have nothing to tell you, except that I thought you were a gentleman
and a friend. There is some one coming out of the billiard-room."

Daisy appeared in the doorway at the moment.

"The rubber's over already," she said, "just two hands. Won't you and
Lord Lindfield----"

She stopped suddenly. It was clear he had not heard her, for, with arms
still held out, he faced Jeannie, unconscious of any one but her.

"Jeannie----" he began again.

Jeannie did not look at him.

"Please let me pass," she said.--"No, Daisy, I think I have played
enough. I am going upstairs. It is late. I am tired."

CHAPTER XXIII.

Jeannie went straight to her room. It was done, even as she had said,
and her heart bled for her triumph. Yet she did not for a moment repent
it. Had it been necessary to do it again, she would again have gone
through the same hateful scene, and her scorn of herself weighed light
even now with the keeping of the promise she had made by the bedside of
Diana. But the thing had been worse than she had anticipated; it was no
superficial desire she had aroused in him, but the authentic fire. But
that made Daisy the safer: a man was not often in earnest like that.

But still the future was unplanned for; she had made her scene, scored
h