and these delights to bestow. She
loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband--yet there
were moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an
objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from
the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place. And once it
crossed her mind--what would she think of another woman who did this?
What would she think if it were Lise? She could not then achieve a sense
of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling
her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity. And little
by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known,
that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an
expression of the man himself. He was the source of it. More and more,
as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand,
as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her. When the
waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer,
and she rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the
curtains, the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused
the light; and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.

"I'd like to be able to play!" she said.

"You can learn," he told her.

"I'm too old!"

He laughed. And as he sat smoking his eyes followed her ceaselessly.

Above the sofa hung a large print of the Circus Maximus, with crowded
tiers mounting toward the sky, and awninged boxes where sat the Vestal
Virgins and the Emperor high above a motley, serried group on the sand.
At the mouth of a tunnel a lion stood motionless, menacing, regarding
them. The picture fascinated Janet.

"It's meant to be Rome, isn't it?" she asked.

"What? That? I guess so." He got up and came over to her. "Sure," he
said. "I'm not very strong on history, but I read a book once, a novel,
which told how those old fellows used to like to see Christians thrown
to the lions just as we like to see football games. I'll get the book
again--we'll read it together."

Janet shivered.... "Here's another picture," he said, turning to the
other side of the room. It was, apparently, an engraved copy of a modern
portrait, of a woman in evening dress with shapely arms and throat and
a small, aristocratic head. Around her neck was hung a heavy rope of
pearls.

"Isn't she beautiful!" Janet sighed.

"Beautiful!" He led her to the mirror. "Look