ock. They would be at their meeting in James's room.
Surely they wouldn't want tea? Apparently Crewdson thought that they
might, otherwise--well, she would leave it to Crewdson. James never
seemed to care for anything done by anybody except Crewdson. Sometimes
he seemed to resent it. "Have we no servants then?" the eyeglass
seemed to inquire. She wondered if James knew for how much his
eyeglass was answerable. How could one like to be kissed, with that
glaring disk coming nearer and nearer? And if it dropped just at the
moment--well, it seemed simply to change all one's feelings. Oh, to
have her arms round Lancelot's salient young body, and hear him
murmur, "Oh, I say!" as she kissed his neck!...

At this moment, being very near to tears, the light was switched off.
She seemed to be drowning in dark. That was a favourite trick of
Lancelot's, who had no business, as a matter of fact, in his father's
room. It gave her a moment of tender joy, and for another she played
with the thought of him, tiptoeing towards her. Suddenly, all in the
dark, she felt a man's arms about her, and a man's lips upon hers. To
wild alarm succeeded warm gratitude. Lucy sobbed ever so lightly; her
head fell back before the ardent advance; her eyes closed. With
parted lips she drank deep of a new consolation: her heart drummed a
tune to which, as it seemed, her wings throbbed the answer. The kiss
was a long one--perhaps a full thirty seconds--but she was released
all too soon. He left her as he had come, on silent feet. The light
was turned up; everything looked as it had been, but everything was
not. She was not. She found herself an Ariadne, in a drawing-room,
still lax from Theseus' arms. Yes, but Theseus was next door, and
would come back to her.

To say that she was touched is to say little. She was more elated than
touched, and more interested than either. How utterly romantic, how
perfectly sweet, how thoughtful, how ardent of James! James, of all
people in the world! Her husband, of course: but who knew better than
she what that office had implied--and who less than she what it must
have hidden? Really, was it true? Could it be true?

For some time she sat luxurious where she had been left, gloating (the
word is fairly used) over this new treasure. But then she jumped up
and looked at herself in the glass, curiously, quizzingly, and even
perhaps shamefaced. Next she laughed, richly and from a full heart.
"My dear girl, it's not hard to