encks's curtailment of her charge's
appetite.

"Surely, Miss Jencks, this _escarole_ is harmless," Roger protested,
with a smile at Margarita's empty plate, but when that lady repeated,
nodding wisely:

"I assure you, Mr. Bradley, she is better without it," he succumbed
meekly, even slavishly, I thought, and shook his head at Margarita's
pleading eyes.

In the centre of the table was a graceful silver dish, filled with
fruit, and as the attendant _bonne_ left the room, Margarita, with a
little cooing throaty cry, reached over to it, seized with incredible
swiftness two great handfuls of the fruit, and leaping from her seat
retreated with her booty to the _salon_. For a second she stood in the
doorway, two yellow bananas hugged to her breast among the rich lace,
an orange in her elbow, her teeth plunged into a great black Hamburg
grape, her eyes two dark blue mutinies.

Roger burst into a Homeric laugh and even Miss Jencks smiled
apologetically.

"I suppose we must let her have the fruit," she conceded, "an old
friend like Mr. Jerrolds will make allowance--"

"We expect the child in June," said Roger simply, and then something
seemed literally to give way in my brain and I clutched the
table-cloth as a sharp hard pain darted through my temples. Strange,
unbelievable though it may seem, I had never thought of such a thing
as this!

[Illustration: FOR HOURS AND HOURS I WALKED, MUTTERING AND CURSING]

My face must have excused my brusque departure, my utter inability to
eat or drink another mouthful. I muttered something about a rough
voyage and my land-legs (I, who never knew the meaning of
_mal-de-mer_!) and I know my forehead must have been drawn, for Miss
Jencks pressed _sal volatile_ upon me solicitously. Roger, manlike,
let me get off immediately and alone, as I begged, and once at the
bottom of the interminable stairs, I flung myself into a wandering
_fiacre_, and drove through the merry, lighted Paris boulevards, a
helpless prey to passions black and bitter--to a wicked, seething
jealousy such as I had never dreamed possible to a decent man.

_That_ was the deep throat, the large and lovely arm! _That_ was the
dreamy, full-fed calm, the woman ruminant! God! how the thought
tortured and tore at me! I, who had thought myself cured and a
philosopher--a kindly philosopher! My first fit of love for her had
carried its exaltation with it, but in this grinding, physical rage
there was only shame and madness.