house, covered with clematis, on a ledge of cliff, with
the sea-gulls wheeling about it--bringing messages from the sunset lands
across the blue, blue sea--" Poor dear! She forgot that sea lit by a
westering sun is of no colour at all and that the blue water lies to the
east; but no matter; Jaffery, drinking in her words, forgot it likewise.
"Away from everything," she continued, "and two people who loved--with a
great, great love--"

Her eyes were fixed on the motor omnibuses passing up and down Maida
Vale at the end of her road. Her lips were parted--the ripeness of youth
and health rendered her adorable. A flush stained her ivory cheek--you
will find the exact simile in Virgil. She was too desirable for
Jaffery's self-control. He bent forward in his chair--they were sitting
face to face, so that he had his back to the motor omnibuses--and put
his great hand on her knee.

"Why not we two?"

It was silly, sentimental, schoolboyish--what you please; but every
man's first declaration of love is bathos--the zenith of his passion
connoting perhaps the nadir of his intelligence. Anyhow the declaration
was made, without shadow of mistake.

Doria switched her knee away sharply, as her vision of sunset and gulls
and blue sea and a clematis-covered house vanished from before her eyes,
and she found herself on her balcony with Jaff Chayne.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"You know very well what I mean."

He rose like a leviathan and made a step towards her. The three-foot
balustrade of the balcony seemed to come to his ankles. She put out a
hand.

"Oh, don't do that, Jaff. You might fall over. It makes me so nervous."

He checked himself and stood up quite straight. Again he felt as if she
had dealt him a slap in the face.

"You know very well what I mean," he repeated. "I love you and I want
you and I'll never be happy till I get you."

She looked away from him and lifted her slender shoulders.

"Why spoil things by talking of the impossible?"

"The word has no meaning. Doesn't exist," said Jaffery.

"It exists very much indeed," she returned, with a quick upward glance.

"Not with an obstinate devil like me."

He leaned against the low balustrade. She rose.

"You'll drive me into hysterics," she cried and fled to the
drawing-room.

He followed, impatiently. "I'm not such an ass as to fall off a footling
balcony. What do you take me for?"

"I take you for Adrian's friend," she said, very erect, brave e