of everything
that's the least pleasant. Besides, the stuff's flat by now, being
poured out in a glass like that, instead of served properly in a
bottle."

Then the fretful expression left his face, and a look of admiration
replaced it.

"By Jove--you look like a lovely gold statue of Diana in that gown!
There's something so ineradicably virginal about you--keeps a chap
falling in love with you over and over."

Sophy hated the especial voice in which he spoke just then. It was the
voice of an amiably inclined Pasha, congratulating himself on his taste
in favourites. She had again put on the orange tea-gown that he liked,
feeling that she must soften him in every way possible before telling
him the painful truth, on his reception of which so much depended. From
the full petal-like collar, her throat rose like a white stamen from a
gold corolla. Chesney's eyes gloated over her--his chief possession.

"George, but you're a beauty!" he said, with his silent laugh. "And shy!
You're wincing this very minute under my praise--my conjugal praise. You
know you are--you incorrigible Artemis."

Sophy looked at him thoughtfully, marvelling. Was it possible that he
had no clear memory of that dreadful dinner at the House of Commons?
Yes. It must be so. With all his latent brutality, he could not have
been cognisant of what he had done there, and yet speak and seem like
this. And it was very hard to know how to begin. It seemed so terrible a
thing to have to bring a look of confusion, of shame even, to that
confident, almost condescendingly assured face. She could not divine the
wild sense of triumph that filled him, because of the accustomed poison
in his veins after his twenty-four hours of enforced fast from it. He
felt that his "strength was as the strength of ten," because he felt
also the bite of the admirable and abominable drug at his midriff. The
sting of the spot where the needle had thrust into his flesh was sweet
as the sting left by a kiss to the normal lover. He knew that he risked
the danger of an abscess every time that he thrust the needle into his
arms or legs, already so thickly punctured. He did not care. Morphia
gives this carelessness--this calm recklessness of all that may follow.

"Cecil ..." said Sophy suddenly. She leaned forward and took his hand in
both hers. His lids contracted. He recognised the tone in her voice, and
it made him uneasy. There was always something disturbing to follow,
when Sophy s