e it is in that nymph's face. Oh, no! not YOUR
face. And there am I struggling through slime to reach you--not MY face,
of course."

She said: "Poor face!" then covered her own. Was she going to cry, and
torture him still more? But, instead, she only murmured: "But you HAVE
reached me!" swayed towards him, and put her lips to his.

He gave way then. From that too stormy kiss of his she drew back for a
second, then, as if afraid of her own recoil, snuggled close again. But
the instinctive shrinking of innocence had been enough for Lennan--he
dropped his arms and said:

"You must go, child."

Without a word she picked up her fur, put it on, and stood waiting for
him to speak. Then, as he did not, she held out something white. It was
the card for the dance.

"You said you were coming?"

And he nodded. Her eyes and lips smiled at him; she opened the door,
and, still with that slow, happy smile, went out....

Yes, he would be coming; wherever she was, whenever she wanted him!...

His blood on fire, heedless of everything but to rush after happiness,
Lennan spent those hours before the dance. He had told Sylvia that he
would be dining at his Club--a set of rooms owned by a small coterie of
artists in Chelsea. He had taken this precaution, feeling that he could
not sit through dinner opposite her and then go out to that dance--and
Nell! He had spoken of a guest at the Club, to account for evening
dress--another lie, but what did it matter? He was lying all the time,
if not in words, in action--must lie, indeed, to save her suffering!

He stopped at the Frenchwoman's flower shop.

"Que desirez-vous, monsieur? Des oeillets rouges--j'en ai de bien beaux,
ce soir."

Des oeillets rouges? Yes, those to-night! To this address. No green with
them; no card!

How strange the feeling--with the die once cast for love--of rushing, of
watching his own self being left behind!

In the Brompton Road, outside a little restaurant, a thin musician was
playing on a violin. Ah! and he knew this place; he would go in there,
not to the Club--and the fiddler should have all he had to spare, for
playing those tunes of love. He turned in. He had not been there since
the day before that night on the river, twenty years ago. Never since;
and yet it was not changed. The same tarnished gilt, and smell of
cooking; the same macaroni in the same tomato sauce; the same Chianti
flasks; the same staring, light-blue walls wreathed with pink flowers