, the fine flavour of her satisfaction was
heightened by the fact that the victim, now before her, was her equal
in birth, her superior in wealth, in intelligence and worldly station.

But as she drew nearer, Richard the while making no effort to go
forward and receive her, buoyant self-complacency and self-congratulation
suffered diminution. For, rehearsing this same meeting during those
rain-blotted days of waiting at Perugia, imagination had presented
Dickie as the inexperienced, tender-hearted, sweet-natured lad she had
known and beguiled at Brockhurst four years earlier. As has already
been stated her meetings with him, since then, had been brief and
infrequent. Now she perceived that imagination had played a silly trick
upon her. The boy she had left, the man who stood awaiting her so
calmly were, save in one distressing peculiarity, two widely different
persons. For in the interval Richard Calmady had eaten very freely of
the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and that diet
had left its mark not only on his character, but on his appearance. He
had matured notably, all trace of ingenuous, boyish charm having
vanished. His skin, though darkened by recent seafaring, was
colourless. His features were at once finer and more pronounced than of
old--the bone of the face giving it a noticeable rigidity of outline,
index at once of indomitable will and irreproachable breeding. The
powerful jaw and strong muscular neck might have argued a measure of
brutality. But happily the young man's mouth had not coarsened. His
lips were compressed, relaxing rarely into the curves which, as a lad,
had rendered his smile so peculiarly engaging. Still there was no trace
of grossness in their form or expression. Hard living had, indeed, in
Richard's case, been matter of research rather than of appetite. The
intellectual part of him had never fallen wholly into bondage to the
animal. He explored the borders of the Forbidden hoping to find some
anodyne with which to assuage the ache of a vital discontent, rather
than by any compulsion of natural lewdness.

Much of this quick-witted Helen quickly apprehended. He was cleverer,
more serious, and mentally more distinguished, than she had supposed
him. And this, while opening up new sources of interest and pricking
her ambition of conquest, disclosed unforeseen difficulties in the way
of such conquest. Moreover, she was slightly staggered by the strength
and inscrutability of