ards fell in a shower over them both.

Plank flipped a card from his knee, laughing uncertainly, aware of
symptoms in his pretty vis-a-vis which always made him uncomfortable.
For months, now, at certain intervals, these recurrent symptoms had made
him wary; but what they might portend he did not know, only that, alone
with her, moments occurred when he was heavily aware of a tension
which, after a while, affected even his few thick nerves. One of those
intervals was threatening now: her flushed cheeks, her feverish activity
with her hands, the unconscious reflex movement of her silken knees
and restless slippers, all foreboded it. Next would come the nervous
laughter, the swift epigram which bored and puzzled him, the veiled
badinage he was unequal to; and then the hint of weariness, the curious
pathos of long silences, the burnt-out beauty of her eyes from which the
fire had gone as though quenched by invisible tears within.

He ascribed it--desired to ascribe it--to her relations with her
husband. He had naturally learned and divined how matters stood with
them; he had learned considerable in the last month or two--something
of Mortimer's record as a burly brother to the rich; something of his
position among those who made no question of his presence anywhere.
Something of Leila, too, he had heard, or rather deduced from hinted
word or shrug or smiling silence, not meant for him, but indifferent to
what he might hear and what he might think of what he heard.

He did listen; he did patiently add two and two in the long solitudes of
his Louis XV chamber; and if the results were not always four, at least
they came within a fraction of the proper answer. And this did not alter
his policy or weaken his faith in his mentors; nor did it impair his
real gratitude to them, and his real and simple friendship for them
both. He was faithful in friendship once formed, obstinately so, for
better or for worse; but he was shrewd enough to ignore opportunities
for friendships which he foresaw could do him no good on his plodding
pilgrimage toward the temple of his inexorable desire.

Lifting, now, his Delft-coloured eyes furtively, he studied the
silk-and-lace swathed figure of the young matron opposite, flung back
into the depths of her great chair, profile turned from him, her chin
imprisoned in her ringed fingers. The brooding abandon of the attitude
contrasted sharply with the grooming of the woman, making both the more
effect