“Just between the fold of the eye and the point of the chin----” he answered.... (Queerly now he imagined himself talking on the shore to the little Gleam; it gave him just the touch that helped.) “--a little straightening of the oval, and the little puff at the mouth-corners drawn out. Why, Bessie, it’s just the vanishing child. And you are taller. I’m almost afraid to speak--to try to put it into words, how pretty you are----” She was elate and puzzled, too. “Where did you get anything like that?” she asked. “It’s what made me remember before. Always when you get through preaching--you pay for it----” It was out before she thought--yet for once the exact unerring thing that was in her mind. He treasured it; saw that his appeal was certain this way; that he must be of the world, and right glib to master her. The way of reality was slow; he must never fail to pay for preaching.... They laughed, and the weariness went from her eyes. The bloom of her health was at its height. Now as Bellair watched her, thinking of the world-ways, she suddenly swept home to him--the old forbidden adventure of her, the meaning of money and nights, her homelessness, the city, the song, the price she would pay if he demanded it. The thing was upon him before he realised. It had all been the new Bellair until now. His body had lain as if in a vault of wax, its essential forces in suspension. Suddenly without warning, the wax had melted away. He did not instantly give battle to the gust of desire--met it eye-to-eye. Bellair felt his own will, and knew he would use it presently. He was rather amazed at the power of the thing as it struck him, and the nature of it, so utterly detached from the redolence and effulgence he had known in the Stone House. This was not the old Hunting Companion who had come with garlands; a minkish aborigine, this, who had come empty-handed, whose hands were out to be filled. The meaning of all that Stackhouse had left in wallets and sea-girt archipelagoes was in this sullen-eyed entity--in the _O_ formed of thirsting lips. Bellair tried to check it before it came--the thought that this was peculiarly a New York manifestation, one destined to be Bessie Brealt’s familiar in future years.... He did not have to use his will. He lost himself in thinking of her plight. “... Please bring the coffee,” she was saying to the waiter, her hand lifted, as if she would touch his sleeve, the familiarity of one who had sung here many nights. “Yes, he will have coffee. He is merely away somewhere.... Yes, we will have it smoked with cognac--but here--do it here. I like to see it burn....” “Very well, Miss Brealt----”