t do you say, Lena? Would I
be capable of throwing you to the lions to save my dignity?"

She got up, walked quickly round the table, posed herself on his knees
lightly, throwing one arm round his neck, and whispered in his ear:

"You may if you like. And may be that's the only way I would consent to
leave you. For something like that. If it were something no bigger than
your little finger."

She gave him a light kiss on the lips and was gone before he could
detain her. She regained her seat and propped her elbows again on the
table. It was hard to believe that she had moved from the spot at all.
The fleeting weight of her body on his knees, the hug round his neck,
the whisper in his ear, the kiss on his lips, might have been the
unsubstantial sensations of a dream invading the reality of waking life;
a sort of charming mirage in the barren aridity of his thoughts. He
hesitated to speak till she said, businesslike:

"Well. And what then?"

Heyst gave a start.

"Oh, yes. I didn't join him. I let him have his laugh out by himself. He
was shaking all over, like a merry skeleton, under a cotton sheet he was
covered with--I believe in order to conceal the revolver that he had in
his right hand. I didn't see it, but I have a distinct impression it was
there in his fist. As he had not been looking at me for some time, but
staring into a certain part of the room, I turned my head and saw a
hairy, wild sort of creature which they take about with them, squatting
on its heels in the angle of the walls behind me. He wasn't there when
I came in. I didn't like the notion of that watchful monster behind my
back. If I had been less at their mercy, I should certainly have changed
my position. As things are now, to move would have been a mere weakness.
So I remained where I was. The gentleman on the bed said he could assure
me of one thing; and that was that his presence here was no more morally
reprehensible than mine.

"'We pursue the same ends,' he said, 'only perhaps I pursue them with
more openness than you--with more simplicity.'

"That's what he said," Heyst went on, after looking at Lena in a sort of
inquiring silence. "I asked him if he knew beforehand that I was living
here; but he only gave me a ghastly grin. I didn't press him for an
answer, Lena. I thought I had better not."

On her smooth forehead a ray of light always seemed to rest. Her loose
hair, parted in the middle, covered the hands sustaining her head. She