is half-sister! How forbearing with her! Indeed, she could not recall
his faults. And he was inevitably destined to brilliant success. She
would be the wife of a great and a wealthy man. And in her own secret
ways she could influence him, and thus be greater than the great.

Love? It is an absolute fact that the name of 'love' did not in the
first eternal moments even occur to her. And when it did she gave it but
little importance. She had to admit that she had not consciously thought
of George Cannon with love--at any rate with love as she had imagined
love to be. Indeed, her immediate experience would not fit any theory
that she could formulate. But with the inexorable realism of her sex she
easily dismissed inconvenient names and theories, and accommodated
herself to the fact. And the fact was that she overwhelmingly wanted
George Cannon, and, as she now recognized, had wanted him ever since she
first saw him. The recognition afforded her intense pleasure. She
abandoned herself candidly to this luxury of an unknown desire. It was
incomparably the most splendid and dangerous experience that she had
ever had. She did not reason and she had no wish to reason. She was set
above reason. Happy to the point of delicious pain, she yet yearned
forward to a happiness far more excruciating. She was perfectly aware
that her bliss would be torment until George Cannon had married her,
until she had wholly surrendered to him.

Yet at intervals a voice said very clearly within her: "All this is
wrong. This is base and shameful. This is something to blush for,
really!" She did blush. But her blushes were a part of the delight. And
the voice was not persistent. She could silence it with scarcely an
effort, despite its clarity.

"Kiss me!" George Cannon demanded of her, with eager masterfulness.

The request shocked her for an instant, and the young girl in her was
about to revolt. But she kissed him--an act which combined the sweetness
of submission with the glory of triumph! She looked at him steadily,
confident in herself and in him. She felt that he knew how to love. His
emotion filled her with superb pride. She seemed to be saying to him in
a doomed rapture: "Do you think I don't know what I am doing? I know! I
know!"

The current of the river was tremendous. She foresaw the probability of
disaster. She was aware that she had definitely challenged the hazard of
fate. But she was not terrified in the dark, swirling night of her