as if by
some powerful magnet. The rest of the world, as also its inhabitants,
was obliterated; they seemed nothing more than shadows passing and
re-passing,--shadows which, if need be, could be pushed aside, offended,
outraged. For what, after all, are shadows?

People are mistaken if they imagine that it requires any effort to
sacrifice position, power, friends, parents,--aye, even home,
nationality, and honour,--when a man is in this condition. For these
things are as nothing, beside the all-devouring anguish of so great a
desire. They are not sacrificed in such circumstances; they simply do
not enter within his purview.

If Leonetta had acted wilfully, deliberately, and with her object
clearly conceived before she began, she could not have achieved any
greater success; for Malster was her abject slave. Jealous of every look
or word she vouchsafed to another, hating even the kitten that her rosy
well-made fingers clasped, literally ill away from her presence, and
thrilled almost painfully by the sound of her voice when she returned,
the whole of Brineweald had become for him but a fantastic and hardly
material background, to a scene in which his emotions beat out their
gigantic throbs like Titans wrestling for freedom. He was not even in a
fit state to use an ordinary foot-rule with accuracy.

To speak to such a man of morals, of ethical duty, of certain
obligations to an elder sister, of responsibility to host or hostess, or
to society, would have been little better than to try to teach table
etiquette to a boa-constrictor. There was only one thing that could
force him to become sober for one instant and to reflect, and that was
the menace of successful rivalry. But even then his sober mood would
last only as long as he was maturing panic schemes to overcome the
difficulty.

Such a mood of sober reflection had, however, possessed him ever since
the advent of Lord Henry, and although he had not the slightest reason
either to suspect or to surmise that the young nobleman wished to
defeat him in any field, such was the magnitude of his desire for
Leonetta and the jealousy it provoked, that every minute that Lord Henry
spoke, every minute that his voice held the flapper's ears in attentive
subjection, were to him so many hours of agonising dread.

A glance at Leonetta would convince him that she was listening; further
observation would reveal the fact that she was also interested; and
finally he would recognise th