of my story?"

"Of course--but--yes, go on."

He drank half a glass of the wine at a draught, and dropping the lighted
cigarette on the bedclothes seemed not to notice it. Sophy hastily
brushed it upon the floor, then lifted it and put it in the ash-tray. He
went on in that sing-song way:

"So the man bared his breast. And he felt the little sting go
in--delicately--deliberately----" His slowly modulated voice seemed to
make her see this fiery sting going into the man's flesh in the dark.
She shivered.

"Oh, finish!" she said. "I don't like this story, Cecil."

"Wait," he murmured. "And as the sting went into his living flesh--there
flowed through him, not death--but rapture--rapture--rapture----" His
voice trailed off.

He seemed to have fallen suddenly asleep. Sophy hoped that he had. It
seemed to her as if he were a little delirious. She started to rise
softly--at once his hand gripped her, holding her down. "I'm not
asleep," he said. "I'm only thinking. I'm thinking how badly I told that
story, when it is really beautiful--quite beautiful. But I don't want to
talk any more."

She waited some moments--then said in a soft, even whisper:

"Asleep, dear?"

Only his heavy breathing answered her. She lifted her hand from his
breast, little by little, turned down the lamp, and stole from the room.
Neutral tinted in face and figure, quietly alert, Gaynor sat on a chair
outside the door. He rose for Sophy to pass. For some reason, that even
she herself could not quite make out, she broke down and wept when she
reached her own room. Kneeling beside her bed, her face buried in her
pillow, her arms clasping it, she kept sobbing: "Oh, poor Cecil! poor
Cecil!"

IX

For a week after this Chesney was much better, if rather languid. He
seemed in a peaceable, rather indifferent frame of mind--that is, he was
apparently detached from immediate matters, such as the life of his
little household, which usually "got on his nerves." He kept his room a
good deal, or lay on the big, leather lounge in the smoking-room,
reading incessantly. His interest in politics, however, seemed suddenly
to have revived, and he continually assured Sophy that the party which
had been in power since 1886 was on its last legs, and that the G. O. M.
would be reinstated as Prime Minister within two years. "If I wasn't so
handicapped with this rotten fever, I'd throw off my coat and jump into
the ring," he kept telling her.

"With the Lib