He laughed ironically. Either he would not see, or he could not see. Men may not be so dense as they appear. Sometimes it is a subconscious cunning that aids them in forcing half the initiative into the hands of the woman. "Surely, it can't be so difficult a job to just snap the catch of that bracelet on your wrist, and forget all about whether I ought to have given it you or not." "Oh, I don't mean that," she exclaimed, "you must know I don't mean that." "Then what?" His whole manner changed. Now she had told him definitely. Now he knew without a shadow of doubt. She cared. It was even swaying in her mind whether she could bear to lose him, notwithstanding all he had said. It did not seem to him that he had worked her up to it. In that moment, he exonerated himself of all blame. He had danced gentleman to the clapping of her hands and the stamping of her foot; and if it came to this, that she cared for him more than convention, more than any principle, then it was not in his nature to force a part upon himself and play it, night after night, to an empty gallery. His hands caught her shoulders, the fingers gripping with passion to her flesh. "Then what?" he repeated. "Do you mean you care for me? Do you mean that it's so hard to go--hard to say good-bye because of that? Is that what you mean?" She could not answer yet. Even then the rope was not drawn and she could still faintly feel the scaffold boards beneath her feet. "If I've made a rotten mistake," he went on, content on the moment in her silence to misdoubt his own judgment. "If I've gone and jumped to this conclusion out of sheer conceit--misreading all I see in your eyes--translating all wrongly what I hear in your silence--you'll have to forgive me. I'm not trying to rush you into any expression of what you feel." He conscientiously thought he was not. "In fact, to tell you the honest truth, to me it seems that you--bringing back this bangle--holding from me your reason in doing so; you, stumbling over everything you say, and looking at me as you have done in the last few moments--that it's you who have dragged these things out of me. All my attitude has been in trying to avoid them, because of what I thought you expected me to be. And now I think differently. Am I right? Am I?" He turned her face to meet his eyes. "Am I?" She raised her eyes once--let his take them--hold them--keep them. Then the boards of the scaffold slipped away from under her feet--one instant the sensation of dropping--dropping; then oblivion--the noose of Fate drawn tight--the account reckoned. She swayed into his arms and he held her--kissing her hair, kissing her shoulders, her cheeks, her eyes--then, gently putting his hand beneath her chin, he lifted her face upwards, and crushed her lips against her teeth with kisses. END OF BOOK I BOOK II THE DESERTER CHAPTER I