for you."

"Thank you," said Lawrence, entirely subdued.

He still felt half dazed: confused and shy, emotions the harder
to disguise because they were so unfamiliar: and restless under
Isabel's merry eyes. How near she was to him, the leaping flames
flinging a dance of light and shadow over her silk shirt, and the
bloom on her cheek, and the dark hair parted on one side (a
boyish fashion which he had always disliked) and waved over her
head! So near that without rising he could have pressed his lips
to that white throat of hers. . . . Last night it had been beauty
clouded, beauty averse, but this morning it was beauty in the
most delicate and derisive and fleeting sunlight of pleasure; and
the temperament of his race delivered Lawrence hand and foot into
its power. The deep waters went over him and he ceased to
struggle--"Isabel," he heard himself saying in a level voice but
without his own volition, "should you mind if I were to kiss
you?"

What a banality to ask of a woman, his second self scoffed at
him: a woman who should be kissed or left alone, but never asked
for a kiss!

"Not very much," said Isabel, presenting her smooth cheek. "Not
if it would do you any good."

Oh irony, oh disenchantment! "Thank you." He curbed his passion
and sat still. "I am not Val."

"Shut your eyes then."

He held his breath: the thick beating of his heart was like a
muffled hammer.

"This isn't the way I kiss Val."

"Isabel!" exclaimed Lawrence. He held out his arms again but
they closed on the empty firelight: she had gone dancing off, the
most fugitive, the most insubstantial of mistresses, nothing left
of her to him but the memory of that moth's wing touch.

"Isabel, come here!" He, sprang to his feet. From the other end
of the room Isabel turned round, wistful, her head bent, glancing
up at him under her eyelashes.

"Oh must you have me?--all of me? Oh Lawrence!--well then--"

She advanced step by step, slowly. Lawrence waited, convinced
that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague
thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity. He waited
and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a
moment on his breast, and then, "Let me go: dearest, don't hold
me!"

He kept her long enough to ask "But are you mine?"

"Yes," said Isabel, sighing.

"This is a grudging gift, Isabel."

"Oh no," she whispered, "not grudging. All my heart: all of me.
Only don't hold me,