p the fallen pearls and dropped
them into his pocket.

Filling a liqueur glass with cognac from the table which the butler had
already arranged for the evening, he slouched back to the sofa and
lifted the fallen volume. The brandy calmed him still further. He sat
there for two hours sipping the cognac, moistening his lips slowly every
now and then, poring over the licentious pictures.

II

In the hansom, glad to be alone, Sophy sat with her arms tight against
her breast as though she would keep something in her from bursting. She
felt singing from head to foot like a twanged bowstring. She sat gazing
at the rhythmic play of the horse's glossy quarters, and the soft blur
of the May night. There had been a slight shower. The pavements were
sleek and dark. There was a smell of soot and wet young leaves in the
air, as of town and country oddly mingled in a kiss.

As this idea occurred to her, she made a movement of irritation.
Kisses! Why should she think of kisses? They were nature's most banal
lures--nauseous. And moodily, her eyes still black from the spread
pupils, she recalled Cecil's first kiss and what it had meant to her.
Something golden, vague, wonderful, fulfilling, yet promising more--more
than fulfilment--an opening of new desires, new aspirations, future
fulfilments more splendid still. He had been a great lover. A line
flashed to her. It sparkled through her mind, searing and cynical:

As wolves love lambs--so lovers love their loves.

He was wolf, now--she, lamb. Ah, well; no! He was mistaken--she was
jaguar, leopard, catamount (he had called her a "silky catamount" in one
of his rages), anything but lamb. She could feel her fangs growing. They
were no longer little milk-teeth at which he laughed. Some day--if he
continued to treat her in this way--some day she would strike and strike
with them--deep into some vital part of that which still lived and which
had once been love. Yes; it would be better to drag a corpse between
them than this fierce, bloated, soulless body that had once been
inhabited by love.

But what was it? What had changed him? She had not been unhappy at
first, though shocked by a certain violence in his passion for her which
had verged on the brutal. In her own impassioned ignorance she had told
herself that this must be the man in him. Later, something finer, surer,
stronger than reason, convinced her that this was not so--that the
blazing bowels of a smelting furnace h