It was. Somewhere the lash had been lost from the whip of his desire. He was still eager, tormented by the wish to feel her disdainful mouth against his. The recrudescence of spring burned in his veins; but, at the same time, there was a new reluctance upon his flesh. The inanimate, obese mask of the priest, Lettice's sleeping countenance faintly stamped with pain, hovered in his consciousness. "It's different," he repeated. "You are losing your hold on pleasure," she observed critically aloof. He leaned forward, and grasped her wrist, and, with a slight motion, forced her upon her knees. "If you are pleasure I'm not," he challenged. "You are hurting my arm," she said coldly. His grip tightened, and a small grimace crossed her lips. "Let go," she demanded; and then a swift passion shrilled her voice. "Let go, you are crushing my wrist. Damn you to hell! if you spoil my wrist I'll kill you." For a moment, as he held her, she reminded Gordon of a venomous snake; he had never seen such a lithe, wicked hatred in any other human being. "You are a gentle object," he satirized her, loosening his hold. She rose slowly and stood fingering her wrist. The emotion died from her countenance. "You see," she explained, "my body is all I have to take me out of this," she motioned to the slumbering water, the towering range, "and I can't afford to have it spoiled. You wouldn't like me if I were lame or crooked. Men don't. The religious squashes can say all they like about the soul, but a woman's body is the only really important thing to her. No one bothers about your soul, but they judge your figure across the street." "Yours hasn't done you much good." "It will," she returned somberly, "it must--real lace and wine and ease." She came very close to him; he could feel the faint jarring of her heart, the moisture of her breath. "And you could get them for me. I would make you mad with sensation." He kissed her again and again, crushing her to him. She abandoned herself to his arms, but she was as untouched, as impersonal, as a stuffed woman of cool satin. In the end he voluntarily released her. "You wouldn't take fire from a pine knot," he said unsteadily. Her deft hands rearranged her hat. "Some day a man will murder me," she replied in level tones; "perhaps I'll get a thrill from that." Her voice grew as cutting as a surgeon's polished knife. "Please don't think I'm the kind of woman men take out in the woods and kiss. You may have discovered that I don't like kissing. I'm going to be honester still--last year, when you were mending the minister's ice house, and hadn't a dollar, I wasn't the smallest bit interested in you; and this year I am.--Not on account of the money itself," she was careful to add, "but because of you and the money together. Don't you see--it changed you; it's perfectly right that it should, and that I should recognize it."