And now the Cossack, covered with blood. He, too, might read aloud from the _Hibbert Journal_—only backwards, so to speak. She had a bruise on her arm. “You think there’s nothing inherently wrong and disgusting in it?” he had asked. “There is, I tell you.” He had laughed and kissed her and stripped off her clothes and caressed her. And she had cried, she had struggled, she had tried to turn away; and in the end she had been overcome by a pleasure more piercing and agonizing than anything she had ever felt before. And all the time Coleman had hung over her, with his blood-stained beard, smiling into her face, and whispering, “Horrible, horrible, infamous and shameful.” She lay in a kind of stupor. Then, suddenly there had been that ringing. The Cossack had left her. And now she was awake again, and it was horrible, it was shameful. She shuddered; she jumped out of bed and began as quickly as she could to put on her clothes. “Really, really, won’t you come?” Mrs. Viveash was insisting. She was not used to people saying no when she asked, when she insisted. She didn’t like it. “No.” Coleman shook his head. “You may be having the last supper. But I have a date here with the Magdalen.” “Oh, a woman,” said Viveash. “But why didn’t you say so before?” “Well, as I’d left the door open,” said Coleman, “I thought it was unnecessary.” “Fie,” said Mrs. Viveash. “I find this very repulsive. Let’s go away.” She plucked Gumbril by the sleeve. “Good-bye,” said Coleman, politely. He shut the door after them and turned back across the little hall. “What! Not thinking of going?” he exclaimed, as he came in. Rosie was sitting down on the edge of the bed pulling on her shoes. “Go away,” she said. “You disgust me.” “But that’s splendid,” Coleman declared. “That’s all as it should be, all as I intended.” He sat down beside her on the divan. “Really,” he said, admiringly, “what exquisite legs!” Rosie would have given anything in the world to be back again in Bloxam Gardens. Even if James did live in his books all the time.... Anything in the world. “This time,” said Mrs. Viveash, “we simply must go through Piccadilly Circus.” “It’ll only be about two miles farther.” “Well, that isn’t much.” Gumbril leaned out and gave the word to the driver. “And besides, I like driving about like this,” said Mrs. Viveash. “I like driving for driving’s sake. It’s like the Last Ride Together. Dear Theodore!” She laid her hand on his. “Thank you,” said Gumbril, and kissed it. The little cab buzzed along down the empty Mall. They were silent. Through the thick air one could see the brightest of the stars. It was one of those evenings when men feel that truth, goodness and beauty are one. In the morning, when they commit their discovery to paper, when others read it written there, it looks wholly ridiculous. It was one of those evenings when love is once more invented for the first time. That, too, seems a little ridiculous, sometimes, in the morning.