at once. Their
eyes blazed on each other. They were like two enemies at grips rather
than two lovers. Then his arms dropped. He laughed. He put up one hand
over his face and went on laughing.

As soon as he released her, Sophy drew one or two long breaths. It
really hurt her to breathe at first, so savagely had he crushed her to
him. Then she stood watching him as he laughed. And he laughed and
laughed.

Suddenly she went up to him, stole her two arms tenderly about him, drew
his face with his hand still over it down to her shoulder.

"Oh, Morris ... Morris ... Morris...." she said.

He stopped laughing and began to shake.

"Endymion...." she whispered close to his ear.

He slid to his knees before her, burying his face in her gown.

They forgave each other before they slept. But deep down in Loring's
heart there was resentment, albeit unrealised.

XVII

The next two weeks they spent at Nahant with Loring's mother.

The dream was fading fast--the dream, but not her love for him. That
remained like clear marble from which the purple glamour cast through
stained glass slowly withdraws. And this clear, white love had more and
more of the maternal in it. She could not have forgiven those scenes of
drink-inflamed passion had not there been in her love for him much of
the indulgent tenderness with which she regarded Bobby's outbreaks. She
did not realise this fully--the purple glow still lingered. Love to a
poet is poetry or it is nothing. If she should ever come to read him in
cold prose, love would flee forever--Pteros--the Flyer, he is called, as
well as Eros....

By the nineteenth of June they were in the full swing of the Newport
season.

Sophy did not play tennis herself, but she would go with Morris to the
Casino in the morning. It amused her to watch all these passionately
energetic young women bent on fashionable slimness, violently exercising
in the torrid heat--looking like some new type of odalisque, veiled with
thick brown veils half way up their noses to prevent sunburn. Madly they
would dart to and fro until midday, then rush for the beach. She found
it even more amusing to see these crowds of men and women disporting on
the well-kept beach and in the sea that looked so well-kept also; the
men, of amazingly varied shapes--bereft of all elegance by their scant
attire; the women more elegant than ever, with the decolletage of
charming legs, and wearing fantastic headgear that made them look