"Only we won't talk about that now, will we? It's too cosy. I AM nice
and tired. Do smoke!"

But Lennan's fingers trembled so that he could hardly light that
cigarette. And, watching them, she said: "Please give me one. Dad
doesn't like my smoking."

The virtue of Johnny Dromore! Yes! It would always be by proxy! And he
muttered:

"How do you think he would like to know about this afternoon, Nell?"

"I don't care." Then peering up through the kitten's fur she murmured:
"Oliver wants me to go to a dance on Saturday--it's for a charity. Shall
I?"

"Of course; why not?"

"Will YOU come?"

"I?"

"Oh, do! You must! It's my very first, you know. I've got an extra
ticket."

And against his will, his judgment--everything, Lennan answered: "Yes."

She clapped her hands, and the kitten crawled down to her knees.

When he got up to go, she did not move, but just looked up at him; and
how he got away he did not know.

Stopping his cab a little short of home, he ran, for he felt cold and
stiff, and letting himself in with his latch-key, went straight to the
drawing-room. The door was ajar, and Sylvia standing at the window. He
heard her sigh; and his heart smote him. Very still, and slender, and
lonely she looked out there, with the light shining on her fair hair so
that it seemed almost white. Then she turned and saw him. He noticed her
throat working with the effort she made not to show him anything, and he
said:

"Surely you haven't been anxious! Nell had a bit of a fall--jumping into
a sandpit. She's quite mad sometimes. I stayed to tea with her--just to
make sure she wasn't really hurt." But as he spoke he loathed himself;
his voice sounded so false.

She only answered: "It's all right, dear," but he saw that she kept her
eyes--those blue, too true eyes--averted, even when she kissed him.

And so began another evening and night and morning of fever, subterfuge,
wariness, aching. A round of half-ecstatic torment, out of which he
seemed no more able to break than a man can break through the walls of a
cell....

Though it live but a day in the sun, though it drown in tenebrous night,
the dark flower of passion will have its hour....

XII

To deceive undoubtedly requires a course of training. And, unversed in
this art, Lennan was fast finding it intolerable to scheme and watch
himself, and mislead one who had looked up to him ever since they were
children. Yet, all the time, he had a feeling that, since