continued to smile, and to say nothing.

Suddenly the Pussum appeared again in the door, her small, childish
face looking sullen and vindictive.

'I know you want to catch me out,' came her cold, rather resonant
voice. 'But I don't care, I don't care how much you catch me out.'

She turned and was gone again. She had been wearing a loose
dressing-gown of purple silk, tied round her waist. She looked so small
and childish and vulnerable, almost pitiful. And yet the black looks of
her eyes made Gerald feel drowned in some potent darkness that almost
frightened him.

The men lit another cigarette and talked casually.

CHAPTER VII.

FETISH

In the morning Gerald woke late. He had slept heavily. Pussum was still
asleep, sleeping childishly and pathetically. There was something small
and curled up and defenceless about her, that roused an unsatisfied
flame of passion in the young man's blood, a devouring avid pity. He
looked at her again. But it would be too cruel to wake her. He subdued
himself, and went away.

Hearing voices coming from the sitting-room, Halliday talking to
Libidnikov, he went to the door and glanced in. He had on a silk wrap
of a beautiful bluish colour, with an amethyst hem.

To his surprise he saw the two young men by the fire, stark naked.
Halliday looked up, rather pleased.

'Good-morning,' he said. 'Oh--did you want towels?' And stark naked he
went out into the hall, striding a strange, white figure between the
unliving furniture. He came back with the towels, and took his former
position, crouching seated before the fire on the fender.

'Don't you love to feel the fire on your skin?' he said.

'It IS rather pleasant,' said Gerald.

'How perfectly splendid it must be to be in a climate where one could
do without clothing altogether,' said Halliday.

'Yes,' said Gerald, 'if there weren't so many things that sting and
bite.'

'That's a disadvantage,' murmured Maxim.

Gerald looked at him, and with a slight revulsion saw the human animal,
golden skinned and bare, somehow humiliating. Halliday was different.
He had a rather heavy, slack, broken beauty, white and firm. He was
like a Christ in a Pieta. The animal was not there at all, only the
heavy, broken beauty. And Gerald realised how Halliday's eyes were
beautiful too, so blue and warm and confused, broken also in their
expression. The fireglow fell on his heavy, rather bowed shoulders, he
sat slackly crouched on the fender