ful
composure, on the breaking up of which his very life seemed to depend.
At last he said:

"What is it? Am I nothing to you, after all?"

But as soon as he had spoken he saw that he need not have asked, and
flung his arms round her. She clung to him with desperation; then freed
herself, and said:

"No, no; let's sit down quietly!"

He obeyed, half-divining, half-refusing to admit all that lay behind
that strange coldness, and this desperate embrace; all the self-pity,
and self-loathing, shame, rage, and longing of a married woman for the
first time face to face with her lover in her husband's house.

She seemed now to be trying to make him forget her strange behaviour;
to be what she had been during that fortnight in the sunshine. But,
suddenly, just moving her lips, she said:

"Quick! When can we see each other? I will come to you to
tea--to-morrow," and, following her eyes, he saw the door opening, and
Cramier coming in. Unsmiling, very big in the low room, he crossed
over to them, and offered his hand to Lennan; then drawing a low chair
forward between their two chairs, sat down.

"So you're back," he said. "Have a good time?"

"Thanks, yes; very."

"Luck for Olive you were there; those places are dull holes."

"It was luck for me."

"No doubt." And with those words he turned to his wife. His elbows
rested along the arms of his chair, so that his clenched palms were
upwards; it was as if he knew that he was holding those two, gripped one
in each hand.

"I wonder," he said slowly, "that fellows like you, with nothing in the
world to tie them, ever sit down in a place like London. I should have
thought Rome or Paris were your happy hunting-grounds." In his voice, in
those eyes of his, a little bloodshot, with their look of power, in his
whole attitude, there was a sort of muffled menace, and contempt, as
though he were thinking: "Step into my path, and I will crush you!"

And Lennan thought:

"How long must I sit here?" Then, past that figure planted solidly
between them, he caught a look from her, swift, sure, marvellously
timed--again and again--as if she were being urged by the very presence
of this danger. One of those glances would surely--surely be seen
by Cramier. Is there need for fear that a swallow should dash itself
against the wall over which it skims? But he got up, unable to bear it
longer.

"Going?" That one suave word had an inimitable insolence.

He could hardly see his hand tou