"I must go," she said suddenly. Her hand extended itself to Anna. A frightened smile widened her mouth. Dorn felt her eyes center excitedly on him. A confused desire to speak kept him silent. He stood up and entered the hall to play his little part as host. But Rachel was gone. The door had closed behind her and he stared at the panels, feeling that the house had emptied itself. Things were normal again. Anna was speaking to her guests, smoothly garrulous. They were putting on hats and saying good-bye. They would have to hurry to escape the rain. He assisted with wraps, his eyes furtively watching the door as if he expected to see it open again, with Rachel returning. "I've really had a wonderful time," the lavender stocking was shrilling. He became solicitous and followed her to the door, walking with her down the housesteps. A moist summer night, promising rain. But the street was empty of Rachel, and he returned. CHAPTER VII They were in their bedroom undressing. Outside, the night rustled with an approaching storm. On the closed windows the rain began a rattle of water. A wind filled the darkness. "What makes you act so strangely to-night, Erik?" She looked at him as she stood uncovering herself. She desired to speak with a disarming casualness. Instead, her words came with a sound of tears in them. He was always strange--always going away from her until she had to close her eyes and love in the dark without trying to see him. Now he might go to war and be killed. Something would happen. "Something ... something ..." kept murmuring itself in her thought. "I love to hear you play to a crowd," he answered good-humoredly. "Why?" She could not get the languor out of her voice. "When people listen to music it always reminds me we are descended from fish. God, what dolts! Minds like soft-bodied sea growths. I can actually see them sometimes." "You always dislike my friends." She would argue with him, and in his anger his strangeness would go away. "Your friends?" He seemed pleased at the chance of growing angry. "Allow me to point out to you that the assemblage to-night had the distinction of being my friends. I discovered the collection. I brought them to the house first." "They think you're wonderful." She would get him angry that way. "A virtue, I admit. But it doesn't excuse their other stupidities." They seemed to have nothing to argue about. Anna loosened her hair. The sight of it rolling in glistening bronzes and reds from her head invariably gave her a desire to cover Erik's face in it. With his face buried in the disordered masses of her hair she would feel an exquisite fullness of love. "You don't think Rachel stupid, do you?" Dorn felt a relief at the sound of her name. His thought was full of her, but he had been afraid to talk. "Miss Laskin," he replied, concealing his eagerness for the topic with a drawl, "is partially insane."