Struck by the folly of that caution, he hurried into the hall, as though to escape an outburst of laughter. He was close to the front door when she appeared in his path, materialized from thin air. "Wait outside. I'll go with you." She stood tearing her handkerchief to pieces, looking at him strangely out of her swollen eyes, her cheeks flushed. She went on: "Why, we must talk. We can surely find the way out. But not here. At the rooms." A film passed over her eyes. She caught him fast round the neck, raised her lips toward his, and whispered, with a distracted appearance that seemed guilty as well as passionate, "You still love me? As much as ever?" He felt that he and she had reached the depths. This temptation capping the climax of her rejection--this monstrous inversion of the classic triangle! "What is she, then?" he asked himself, "and what am I?" For he caught hold of her as if he were going to crush her doubly perfidious, inexplicable heart, and fastened his lips to hers in a kiss that burned her up, before he thrust her from him with a gesture meant to express all his loathing of her, of himself, of the whole of life. "Oh, wait!" she cried, as he fumbled with the door. To hold her off with the first words that came into his head, he cast at her: "To-morrow!" She remained facing the closed door, softly repeating: "To-morrow." CHAPTER XLVI Cornelius Rysbroek had just driven up before the house in a blue runabout. Now, sunk down behind the steering wheel, he gaped at the black-bearded man who stood like a rock at the foot of a low flight of steps. Lawrence Teck put on his hat, gave Cornelius Rysbroek a blind stare, climbed into a hired car. In doing so he showed his aquiline profile; and Cornelius recalled the moonlit terrace of the Brassfields' country house. "It's he!" The hired car set out for New York; and behind it, all the way, went the blue runabout. CHAPTER XLVII She entered her sitting room, locked the door, threw herself upon the couch. Round lunch time there came a creaking in the corridor, a knock. It was David in his wheel chair, propelled by Hamoud. "No lunch. And perhaps no dinner. It's only a headache, dear. I shall be all right." "Your voice sounds----" "Why not, since I'm suffering a little?" The creaking sound died away. At the first glimmer of dawn she was up. An hour later she entered David's bedroom, dressed, hatted, and gloved. Her skin appeared translucent. Her hands, drawing her cloak round her shivering body, seemed almost too weak for that task. "Why, where are you going?" "To town. It seems that Parr has fallen ill." She leaned over him quickly, thinking of all the kisses of betrayal that had ever been bestowed upon the unaware. She went out leaving him dumfounded by her appearance of feverish eagerness, energy, and illness.