well say shoot him
through the heart?"

He said to himself, "How she sticks to it! This pretense is all she
has to cling to, poor thing, in lieu of saying straight out, 'I can't
return to that old adventure now. Too much time has intervened; I'm no
longer the same woman. I must stick to this new romance.'" He said to
himself, "I shall get away from here this moment." He turned toward
the doorway.

"Remember," he told her wearily, "I'm depending on your silence."

Struck by the folly of that caution, he hurried into the hall, as
though to escape an outburst of laughter.

He was close to the front door when she appeared in his path,
materialized from thin air.

"Wait outside. I'll go with you."

She stood tearing her handkerchief to pieces, looking at him strangely
out of her swollen eyes, her cheeks flushed. She went on:

"Why, we must talk. We can surely find the way out. But not here. At
the rooms." A film passed over her eyes. She caught him fast round
the neck, raised her lips toward his, and whispered, with a distracted
appearance that seemed guilty as well as passionate, "You still love
me? As much as ever?"

He felt that he and she had reached the depths. This temptation
capping the climax of her rejection--this monstrous inversion of the
classic triangle! "What is she, then?" he asked himself, "and what am
I?" For he caught hold of her as if he were going to crush her doubly
perfidious, inexplicable heart, and fastened his lips to hers in a kiss
that burned her up, before he thrust her from him with a gesture meant
to express all his loathing of her, of himself, of the whole of life.

"Oh, wait!" she cried, as he fumbled with the door.

To hold her off with the first words that came into his head, he cast
at her:

"To-morrow!"

She remained facing the closed door, softly repeating:

"To-morrow."

CHAPTER XLVI

Cornelius Rysbroek had just driven up before the house in a blue
runabout. Now, sunk down behind the steering wheel, he gaped at the
black-bearded man who stood like a rock at the foot of a low flight of
steps.

Lawrence Teck put on his hat, gave Cornelius Rysbroek a blind stare,
climbed into a hired car. In doing so he showed his aquiline profile;
and Cornelius recalled the moonlit terrace of the Brassfields' country
house.

"It's he!"

The hired car set out for New York; and behind it, all the way, went
the blue runabout.

CHAPTER XLVII

She ent