was the source of it. More and more, as
he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand, as
he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the
waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she
rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains,
the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light;
and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.

"I'd like to be able to play!" she said.

"You can learn," he told her.

"I'm too old!"

He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly.

Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded
tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal
Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand.
At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding
them. The picture fascinated Janet.

"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?" she asked.

"What? That? I guess so." He got up and came over to her. "Sure," he
said. "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel,
which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown to
the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book
again--we'll read it together."

Janet shivered.... "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the
other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern
portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and a
small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of
pearls.

"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed.

"Beautiful!" He led her to the mirror. "Look!" he said. "I'll buy you
pearls, Janet, I want to see them gleaming against your skin. She can't
compare to you. I'll--I'll drape you with pearls."

"No, no," she cried. "I don't want them, Claude. I don't want them.
Please!" She scarcely knew what she was saying. And as she drew away from
him her hands went out, were pressed together with an imploring,
supplicating gesture. He seized them. His nearness was suffocating her,
she flung herself into his arms, and their lips met in a long, swooning
kiss. She began instinctively but vainly to struggle, not against him
--but against a primal thing stronger than herself, stronger than he,
stronger than codes and conventions and institutions, which yet she
craved fiercely as her being's fulfilment. It was sweeping them dizzil