Her cup of misery runs over. “No doubt,” she answers with a shuddering distinctness. “If you ask Féodorovna, she will write you a long account of my wedding! She is a great letter-writer!” As if the words possessed some paralyzing spell over their feet, both of them stop dead short; and, turning round, stare full in each other’s faces, conversation shrivelling up its thin fabric in that fiery moment; and then--the inevitable happens. The gasping lips draw nearer, nearer, nearer; the idly hanging arms stretch themselves out, enfold, embrace, crush; and, with no apparent initiation on either side, Fate hurls them upon one another’s forbidden breasts. Their kisses are frantic with the haste of six wasted weeks, and have their edge given by the knowledge that, for these sad two, there is only one little dreg at the bottom of the wine-cup of life and love, and that if they do not make haste to drain it, it will be poured out on the desert ground that is soaked with the lost vintages meant to appease the thirst of parched humanity. They have thrust away the irksome apparition that had officiously flitted between them. For such a ghost’s thin body there is no room between his heart and hers. Out of both those hearts all their former long-established, deep-rooted inhabitants are turned, driven by the flail of the one supreme scourge. In those hearts Honour had held her high court, Duty had wielded her sceptre, unselfish Family Affection been warmly nested. Now, of none of them is there a trace left in either consciousness. For neither of them does anything exist but the omnipotent primal instinct--the instinct that drove the first man and woman into each other’s throbbing arms. It is not for long--not for more than a few moments--only for one kiss-length, that that mad, dumb, clinging oblivion endures. Then the old ejected law-givers begin to gather up their sceptres and return; boldly ejecting, in their turn, the furious rebel that had ousted them; and the two that God has not joined together stagger apart. As in the impulse of embrace neither was earlier or later than the other, so is the shock of disunion common and simultaneous. They find themselves standing apart, uncertainly staring at each other in the imperfect consciousness of an enormous joint crime. It was only a kiss--an utter, scorching, lover’s kiss, it is true--yet still only a kiss that has so seared their re-awakening consciences; but had their disloyalty gone to the extremest pitch of unfaithfulness, it could hardly have branded them with a deeper sense of guilt. Her white lips frame three scarcely audible words, which he yet hears--“This--day--week!”--and he whispers, in horrified ejaculation, “Rupert! _Bill!_”