the
reverberating rattle of physical excitement.

Thus everything progressed smoothly under Mrs. Draper's management.
The young couple met each other usually in the rather close air of her
candle-lighted living-room, drinking a great deal of tea, consuming
large numbers of delicate, strangely compounded sandwiches,
and listening to an endless flow of somewhat startlingly frank
personalities from the magnetic mistress of the house. Sylvia and
Jermain did not talk much on these occasions. They listened with
edification to the racy remarks of their hostess, voicing that
theoretical "broadness" of opinion as to the conduct of life which,
quite as much as the perfume which she always used, was a specialty of
her provocative personality; they spoke now and then, to be sure, as
she drew them into conversation, but their real intercourse was almost
altogether silent. They eyed each other across the table, breathing
quickly, and flushing or paling if their hands chanced to touch in the
services of the tea-table. Once the young man came in earlier than
usual and found Sylvia alone for a moment in the silent, glowing,
perfumed room. He took her hand, apparently for the ordinary handclasp
of greeting, but with a surge of his blood retained it, pressing it
so fiercely that his ring cut into her finger, causing a tiny drop of
bright red to show on the youthful smoothness of her skin. At this
living ruby they both stared fixedly for an instant; then Mrs. Draper
came hastily into the room, saying chidingly, "Come, come, children!"
and looking with displeasure at the man's darkly flushed face. Sylvia
was paler than usual for the rest of the afternoon, and could not
swallow a mouthful of the appetizing food, which as a rule she
devoured with the frank satisfaction of a hungry child. She sat,
rather white, not talking much, avoiding Jerry's eyes for no reason
that she could analyze, and, in the pauses of the conversation, could
hear the blood singing loudly in her ears.

Yet, although she felt the oddest relief, as after one more escape,
at the end of each of these afternoons with her new acquaintances,
afternoons in which the three seemed perpetually gliding down a
steep incline and as perpetually being arrested on the brink of some
unexplained plunge, she found that their atmosphere had spoiled
entirely her relish for the atmosphere of her home. The home
supper-table seemed to her singularly flat and distasteful with its
commonplace