of the food, but called for more of the drink, and felt the
soul of it thrill along his frozen nerves until they awoke, sharpened,
alert, and eager. He lay so, with closed eyes a little time, floating in
an ecstasy that seemed to be half stupor and half of keenest
sensibility. Then he opened his eyes. She was kneeling by the couch on
which he lay. He felt her soft, quick breathing, and noted the unnatural
shining of her eyes and lips where the firelight fell upon them. All at
once he threw out his arms and drew her to him with such a shuddering
rush of power that she cried aloud in quick alarm--but the cry was
smothered under his kisses.

For ages the transport seemed to endure, the little world of his senses
whirling madly through an illimitable space of sensuous light, his lips
melting upon hers, his neck bending in the circle of pulsing warmth that
her soft arms wove about it, his own arms crushing to his breast with
frenzied fervour the whole yielding splendour of her womanhood. A moment
so, then he fell back upon the couch, all his body quivering under the
ecstasy from her parted lips, his triumphant senses rioting insolently
through the gray, cold garden of his vows.

She drew a little back, her hands resting on his shoulders, and he saw
again the firelight shining in her eyes and upon her lips. Yet the eyes
were now lighted with a strange, sad reluctance, even while the
mutinous lips opened their inciting welcome.

He was floating--floating midway between a cold, bleak heaven of denial
and a luring hell of consent; floating recklessly, as if careless to
which his soul should go.

His gaze was once more upon her face, and now, in a curiously cool
little second of observation, he saw mirrored there the same conflicting
duality that he knew raged within himself. In her eyes glowed the pure
flame of fear and protest--but on her mad lips was the curl of
provocation. And as the man in him had waited carelessly, in a sensuous
luxury of unconcern, for his soul to go where it might--far up or far
down--so now the woman waited before him in an incurious, unbiassed
calm--the clear eyes with their grave, stern "_No_!"--the parted lips
all but shuddering out their "_Yes_!"

Still he looked and still the leaning woman waited--waited to welcome
with impartial fervour the angel or the devil that might come forth.

And then, as he lay so, there started with electric quickness, from some
sudden coldness of recollection, the