note hardening his voice;
and it thrilled her to hear it, and every drop of blood in her body
leaped as she yielded to his arms again, heavy-lidded, trembling,
confused, under the piercing sweetness of contact.

The perfume of her mouth, her hair, the consenting fingers locked in
his, palm against palm, the lips, acquiescent, then afire at last,
responsive to his own; and her eyes opening from the dream under the
white lids--these were what he had of her till every vein in him pulsed
flame. Then her voice, broken, breathless:

"Good night. Love me while you can--and forgive me! ... Good night. ...
Where are we? All--all this must have stunned me, blinded me. ... Is this
my door, or yours? Hush! I am half dead with fear--to be here under the
light again. ... If you take me again, my knees will give way. ... And I
must find my door. Oh, the ghastly imprudence of it! ... Good night ... good
night. I--I love you!"

CHAPTER VI MODUS VIVENDI

After the first few days of his arrival at Shotover time had threatened
to hang heavily on Mortimer's mottled hands. After the second day afield
he recognised that his shooting career was practically over; he had
become too bulky during the last year to endure the physical exertion;
his habits, too, had at length made traitors of his eyes; a half hour's
snipe-shooting in the sun, and the veins in his neck swelled ominously.
Panting, eyes inflamed, fat arms wobbly, he had scored miss after miss,
and laboured onward, sullenly persistent to the end. But it was the
end. That cup day finished him; he recognised that he was done for. And,
following the Law of Pleasure, which finishes us before we are finished
with it, he did not experience any particular sense of deprivation in
the prospect. Only the wholesome dread caging. But Mortimer, not yet
done with self-indulgence in more convenient forms, cast about him
within his new limits for occupation between those hours consecrated to
the rites of the table and the card-room.

He drove four, but found that it numbed his arms, and that the sea air
made him sleepy. Motor-cars agreed with him only when driving with a
pretty woman. Forced through ennui to fish off the rocks, he soon tired
of the sea-perch and rock-cod and the malodours of periwinkle and clam.

Then he frankly took to Major Belwether's sunny side of the gun-room,
with illustrated papers and apples and decanter. But Major Belwether,
always as careful of his digestion as of hi