Her bottom cheeks were pink as though they had been clutched. There were fingermarks upon her bottom cheeks, I swear.

The lamp was on. One does not look between a woman's legs in light. I had not stirred nor answered her. She heeled the drawers off nimbly and I saw a damp stain there, down at the crotch.

'I am so moist there-put it in', she said. Her face was flushed from drinking too much wine-the red that brings a flush into her cheeks. Richard ascended from the drawing room where they had been. He passed our door on tiptoe and closed his own as though he feared the noise to sound.

'Do not speak so', I said. I would not look. She frequently had such a lewdness on her in her words.

There was a silence then-that silence of foreboding such as when a house stands dark and empty on a moor and the first snow falls upon the silent eaves.

'You do not want to-will not challenge your cock to my nest?', she asked, and laughed a scornful laugh that hurt my mind. 'If you believe your sinful thoughts of me, then sinful I may be, just to fulfill the image in your mind, Phillip. Come-challenge! — take me under you and I will tell you very naughty things. I only have my stockings on. You like to feel my stockings, do you not?'

Ah, wheedling voice, and yet I did not speak. That was the voice of sin and not of love. I felt her kneel up on the bed and knew her legs to be apart. I strained away. Her hand touched at my shoulder and then fell. It was the breaking point perhaps. I knew it to be so but could not help myself.

Then I shall sleep elsewhere', I heard her say.

O utter loneliness of that wide bed when the door opened, closed, and she had gone! Her long, frilled nightgown lay still on the bed. I heard the slither of her stockinged feet. All night, it seemed, moans sounded in my ears. One cannot write of such, cannot. No words were spoken at the breakfast table. Amy and Sylvia were mute and hushed. Richard took coffee in his room. Within an hour the bags were all brought down. Solemnity fell upon us like a pall.