ou have genius, which is
far above either. I am not leaving you any choice at all. To-morrow I
shall bring the play."

"You may at least do that," she answered. "It will be a pleasure to
hear it read. Come to luncheon, and we will have a long afternoon."

Matravers took his leave with a sense of relief. Their farewell had
been cordial enough, but unemotional. Yet even he, ignorant of women
and their ways as he was, was conscious that they had entered
together upon a new phase of their knowledge of each other. The touch
of their fingers, the few conventional words which passed between
them, as she leaned over the staircase watching him descend, seemed to
him to savour somehow of mockery. He passed out from her presence into
the cool, soft night, dazed, not a little bewildered at this new
strong sense of living, which had set his pulses beating to music and
sent his blood rushing through his body with a new sweetness. Yet with
it all he was distressed and unhappy. He was confronted with the one
great influence of life against which he had deliberately set his
face.

CHAPTER VIII

Matravers began to find himself, for the first time in his life,
seriously attracted by a woman. He realized it in some measure as he
walked homeward in the early morning, after this last interview with
Berenice; he knew it for an absolute fact on the following evening
as he walked through the crowded streets back to his rooms with
the manuscript of the play which he had been reading to her in his
pocket. He felt himself moving in what was to some extent an unreal
atmosphere. His senses were tingling with the excitement of the last
few hours--for the first time he knew the full fascination of a
woman's intellectual sympathy. He had gone to his task wholly devoid
of any pleasurable anticipation. It spoke much for the woman's tact
that before he had read half a dozen pages he was not only completely
at his ease, but was experiencing a new and very pleasurable
sensation. The memory of it was with him now--he had no mind to
disturb it by any vague alarm as to the future of their relationship.

In Piccadilly he met Fergusson, who turned and walked with him.

"I have been to your rooms, Matravers," the actor said. "I want to
know whether you have arranged with your friend?"

"I have just left her," Matravers replied. "She appears to like the
play, and has consented to play Bathilde."

The actor smiled. Was Matravers really so simple,