ugh. "You find it 'nice'?"

"_Very_ nice," said Belinda.

She smiled suddenly. Her teeth glistened with a strange silvery lustre
in the moonlight.

"Why?... Don't you?" she asked, her voice slightly shaken as by withheld
laughter. It was going to be easier, after all, than she had thought.
She did not realise that Bacchus had as much to do with it as Venus. She
only knew that Morris was vibrating to her nearness, that his blood was
trembling in him.

As he did not answer, she put out her hand and laid it lightly on his
breast.

"Don't you?" she said again.

"Don't I what?" he asked rather crossly.

That hand was like a white flame to his drink-stirred blood.

"Oh, Morry!... What a fraud you are!..."

She laughed smotheredly like Lorelei through some soft, warm wave. "What
an awful fraud you are, Morry!... You pay me compliments and all the
time you're thinking what a nuisance it's going to be, having me at
Newport this season!"

Loring looked at her oddly. Then he looked down at the white hand which
still lay against his breast.

"Take your hand away, Linda!" he said curtly.

She took it away and turned it about before her in the moonlight, gazing
at it consideringly.

"Poor little old hand!" she breathed pityingly. "You've offended the
king...."

She held it up between them, again laughing.

"Must I cut it off?" she asked teasingly. "Will you cut it off for me
and 'cast it into the fire'?"

Loring said nothing. He leaned there looking at her darkly. He hated her
and desired her. It was the old emotion, under whose stress he had once
kissed her, magnified tenfold.

She straightened suddenly and was close to him.

"Why are you so horrid to me, Morry?" she said, in a vehement whisper.
"What have I done to vex you? I think it's cruel of you ... my first
evening at home ... my first 'grown-up' evening with you...."

He saw her lips trembling. It made him quite breathless to see those
full, rich lips trembling so near his.

"I don't mean to be horrid," he said constrainedly.

"But you are ... you _are_!..." she insisted. Her voice hummed with
passion like a 'cello string. "You _are_!..." she repeated. "What have I
done that you should order me not to touch you--as though my hand were
poisonous?"

"I ... I'm nervous this evening...." he said lamely. He knew that he
should have turned and gone forthwith into the drawing-room. He simply
couldn't. The Purple Emperor aroma--the Belinda magic--held hi