"People's selfishness makes me sick. Look at your white face and your
drooping eyelids, and your tired little smiles."

"I am sorry."

"Sorry! Good God! My beloved, do take care of yourself, please. Promise
me not to see any one after I leave; go to bed and pull the blinds."

"But I am expecting Bill."

"Bill will be all the better for not getting what he wants for once."

"But supposing he doesn't want it?"

"I don't understand."

The door opened.

"Bill!" She put out her left hand, all her features lit up with a quiet
luminous radiance. His eyes were smiling, but his mouth was grave.

"Elaine!" He said it as if it were a very significant remark, and,
though he hadn't meant to, he caressed her name with his voice.

"Mortimer thinks I ought to go to bed and send you away."

"But you won't?"

"Probably not." She was bubbling over with gaiety. "I am very
weak-minded."

The two men were not looking at one another, but currents of hostility
flowed between them. Bill had not fought for Elaine's love; it had come
to him with a strange inevitability. He had no fear of losing it and no
particular desire to keep it, but the thought that you possess something
that some one else passionately covets is always exhilarating. He would
never have admitted it--he could never have admitted it, but she was to
him like an object dangled on a watch chain--not obtrusively displayed
but a possession recognised by everybody and taken for granted by him.
Only he never seemed bored because he was never tired of mobilising his
own charms. And in herself, she delighted him--it was only in her
relations with him that she got on his nerves. He loved to see her with
other men exercising the divine arts of her irresistibility, her every
smile, her every gesture, the intonations of her voice, the turn of her
head, her bubbling brilliance, her cool indifference, the ice of her
intellect, the glow of her sympathy, each contributing to the
masterpiece of her coquetry. But with him she was not even a
coquette--jerky, passionate, nervous, humble, exacting, dull--she tired
him to death.

"Well, I must be going." Mortimer spoke doubtfully. There was a pause.
Then Elaine pulled herself together.

"Why?"

"I have so much to do."

"It was so nice of you to come and see me."

"It was so nice of you to let me come. Please remember your promise to
let me know when you come back."

"Of course." He was gone.

Wearily she shut her eyes. "D