most boys of eight.

"And he gets off with an apology!" thought Loring angrily. He was as
severe in his ideas of the training of children as are most men who have
been badly spoilt themselves. His hands fairly ached to whip Cecil
Chesney's son.

But he was mollified when he found that the boy had been punished, in
what Sophy assured him was a far more painful way than any mere whipping
would have been.

XIX

Loring had got over the first novelty of having the moon descend to his
crying. Selene was now a domesticated planet. They moved in the same
orbit. He felt, without realising it, somewhat as a lover might feel
who, while gazing entranced at the silver disk in mid-heaven, suddenly
finds himself transported among the Mountains of the Moon. The lunar
landscape, thus familiarly envisaged, struck him as a little bleak.
There was nothing "chummy" about Sophy, he decided. He had always
thought it would be great fun to drink wine freely with the woman one
was in love with. A "bully" dinner after hunting, or a cosy supper after
the play, with plenty of champagne to enliven it. Champagne added such
zest to kisses. He felt aggrieved that Sophy did not care for this form
of bliss. She said that wine "blurred" her. Such a rum expression! He
thought her prudish. He told her so on one occasion.

"Look here, Goddess," he said fretfully. "You run your temple-business
in the ground. You treat love-making like a religious ceremony. Hang
it!-- I can't feel like Cupid's high-priest all the year 'round. Love
ought to be just a bully sort of spree sometimes."

Sophy had said, flushing:

"I'm sorry I seem priggish. But I'm afraid I'll never be able to look on
love as 'just a bully sort of spree.'"

Loring had flushed, too.

"Well ... a chap can't go on playing Endymion forever. I suppose there
was an end even to the Moon's honeymoon!"

It was after dinner one evening during the next winter. As usual, he had
been drinking freely. This always made him either amorous or irritable.
As she would not endure the amorousness, irritability invariably
resulted. Sophy was by this time frankly unhappy. But no one guessed
it--not even Loring. She had come to feel the full weight of that family
remark: "Morry has such a strong will!" She had found that this will of
his was far stronger than his love for her. Yet he loved her still. At
times even the old feeling of worship gave him pause for an instant.
But the steady drinking--cockt