m
thralled. Belinda wanted to fall forward on his breast and have her
laugh out in the dark warmth of his embrace. But the time was not yet.
Some day they would laugh together with love's wild, kiss-broken
laughter over this comic interview. But not now.

"Are you sorry you were so horrid?" she murmured.

"Oh, yes ... naturally!..."

She had her velvety finger-tips against his mouth in a flash.

"Then kiss it ... beg its pardon!" she said.

Loring snatched down her hand and ground it between his.

"Linda! You little devil!... You little _devil_!..." he said.

He pushed her from him, then swung her to him violently. He loosed her
hand and gripped her hard by both shoulders. This grip was brutal and
painful. She found it delicious to be hurt by him. That was her type.

"Let me tell you ... let me tell you," he gasped, and this gasping voice
also filled her with joy, "you'll play with fire once too often, my dear
... just once too often.... Burns don't make becoming scars.... Now
leave me alone!"

He flung her off in good earnest this time, and strode away to the
library. His pulses were racing--his blood pounding. He was scared. He
did not mean to be false to Sophy for a worldful of Belindas. Not that
his love for Sophy was what it had been. The old ardour was clean gone.
He found her cold. He felt cold to her. Yet something in him clung
blindly to what had been--to the revealed self in him that Sophy had
once called forth.

XXVI

According to agreement, Belinda arrived in Newport two weeks later, the
day before the ball. When she came downstairs next evening, dressed for
the occasion, Sophy thought that she had never seen so palpitantly
gorgeous a creature. It was not her gown that was gorgeous, but the
beauty that it illumined like sunlight catching a cloud. Belinda had
told her step-mother that the regular dress of debutantes was "not her
style." "I should look perfectly absurd in white or blue with rosebuds,"
she had said, with acumen. So she had selected a costume of shaded
apricot chiffon. The rich, fruit-coloured stuff made her breast and arms
look white as peeled almonds.

An old necklace of brilliants and topaz lay like flecks of sunlight on
her milky throat. Belinda never wore modern jewelry. She had an
astonishing gift for decking her own rather extravagant beauty in
precisely the right way. A twist of golden tissue was threaded in and
out through her burnished hair, and held in place by