When the front door closed upon his valet, Ronnie got up and, walking to the window, pulled aside the curtains. The casement was open and he sat down on the padded window-seat, looking out into the darkness. He was not thinking of his night's adventure, being something of a philosopher. The sordidness and the vulgarity of it, would not distress him in any circumstances. He was thinking of Beryl and what John Maxton had said. He knew that she liked him, but he had made no special effort to foster her affection or to evolve from their relationship one more intimate. By his code, she was taboo; lovemaking with Beryl could only lead to marriage, and matrimony was outside of his precarious plans. It pleased him to ponder upon Beryl--perhaps she was in love with him. He had not considered the possibility before. That women only differed by the hats they wore was a working rule of his; but it was strange that the influence he exercised was common to girls so widely separated by birth, education and taste as Beryl was from Evie Colebrook--and others. Self-disparagement was the last weakness to be expected in Ronald Morelle, and yet, it was true to say that he had restricted his hunting for so long to one variety of game, that he doubted his ability to follow another. His father had been an enthusiastic hawker, one of the remaining few who followed the sport of kings, and Ronnie invariably thought of his adventuring in terms of falconry. He was a hawk, enseamed, a hawk that swung on its rigid sails, waiting on until the quarry was sprung. Sometimes the quarry was not taken without talons to rend and tear at the embarrassed falcon--he felt the wounds on his hand gingerly. But a trained hawk respects the domestic fowl, even the folk of the dovecot may coo at peace whilst he waits on in the sky. Beryl--? She was certainly lovely. Her figure was delectable. And her mouth, red and full--a Rossetti woman should not have such lips. Was it Rossetti who painted those delicately featured women? He got up and found a big portfolio filled with prints. Yes, it was Rossetti, but Beryl's figure was incomparably more delicious than any woman's that the painter had drawn. He came back to the window, staring out into the night, until, in the gray of dawn, the outline of trees emerged from the void. Then he went to bed and to sleep. He did not move for five hours and then he woke with a horrible sense of desolation. He blinked round the room and at that instant the clock of a church began to strike--the quarters sounded--a pause. "Toll--toll--toll--toll--toll--toll--toll--toll--toll." Nine o'clock! With a scream of fear he leaped out of bed, sweating, panic-stricken, forlorn. Nine o'clock! "No--no--Christ--no!" François, an early arrival, heard his voice and rushed in. "M'sieur," he gasped. Ronald Morelle was sitting on his bed, sobbing into his hands.