these first bewildering moments of sudden
glamour, she was not in the least minded to enter into a long, unbroken,
spellbound dalliance. Loring found himself very short of kisses indeed
during the next few weeks.

Sophy, as it were, got her head above those heavy, golden waves. She
gasped deep of the fresh air of reason. She would not sink down to this
strange, love-lighted underworld without a final struggle for freedom,
for the clear daylight of common sense. He had to listen to much plain
speaking. Sometimes he sulked, sometimes fumed; usually he ended by
laughing with that low laughter against which she felt so oddly
helpless. There is nothing in the world more disconcerting than this
low, mocking laughter of love that knows itself stronger than reason. In
vain Sophy pointed out to him the difference in their ages, in their
tastes (this he furiously denied). She sternly bade him listen while she
read aloud from books that were her daily food. He listened with
heroism.

But one evening over Plotinus he actually nodded. They had been hunting.
The geranium-scented warmth of her study, the soft crackle of the fire,
her lulling contralto voice as she read aloud to him the words of the
mystic whom he privately thought "a hipped old Johnny" because he was so
ashamed of having a body that he wouldn't tell his birth-date ... (How
Loring despised him for this denial of ruddy life!)--these things,
together with the deep comfort of the old, leather armchair in which he
sat, caused him to doze pleasantly. He woke with a jerk, at the sudden
stopping of her voice. Her grey eyes were fixed on him over the volume
of Plotinus, cool and smiling.

"You see?" she said. "What rouses my soul puts you to sleep!"

Loring had looked at her sombrely.

"I'll tell you what _I_ think," he had said at last. "I think you fence
yourself about with these old philosopher Johnnies because you're afraid
of love. That's what I think, Beautiful."

Sophy had coloured, which always delighted him. He felt that he had won
when her blood rose at his words.

She pointed out to him the complications that would arise in their life
together, from the fact that Bobby would have to be educated in England.

"I couldn't possibly let him go there alone," she said. "His grandmother
dislikes me, as I've told you. She'd do all in her power to wean him
from me. And it's absolutely right and necessary that he should grow up
an Englishman...."

"He can grow up a