Judy lay imagining ... imagining ... and she thought of Nicky's firm, soft little body, and how it had felt to her hungry hands and tried to feel it all over again in her bed and imagine it belonged to her and Joe. And she saw the cold, pale dawn come in, and her dream shivered and fled before it, and she was left with only her bitter knowledge that it would never happen, and if it did, not that way. And she wished with a futile frenzy of longing that she had never chosen to keep Killigrew by giving him her whole self in fee, but by refusing herself to him had been able to leave him and live down the hold he had on her soul and mind which had grown to such strength in those first three years. Her first fear when she gave him everything had been lest attainment should dull even that want he had of her, but she found he had spoken truth when he said that that was a quality which grew with having. For fewer men are bored with satiety than kept by a custom that becomes necessity, and his habit for her would in itself be an attraction for him. But Killigrew, for all his cleverness, was not the man to know, if any could have, how passionate her withholding had been, how passionless was her surrender. CHAPTER X LONE TRAILS So much of mental passion could be lived through upon one side of a wall and on the other Georgie wake fresh and unknowing of it all, stretch a moment, wonder as to what time Judy had come in, tip-toe to her room and peep, to see a sleeping face so pale and haggard that she withdrew, suddenly sorry, she did not quite know why. Judy could look old ... she reflected. Georgie herself felt a lilting sense of interest in this day which she had not hitherto during her stay at Paradise Cottage. Nothing had happened, and yet somehow she felt different. It was not even that she had had a letter from Val, for he had written two days ago, and so she would not hear again for several days, a ready pen not being his. And she was beginning to be guiltily conscious that she did not enjoy getting his letters; they seemed somehow to disrupt atmosphere instead of creating it. Everything was different from that day on the river when Val had told her he loved her and it had all seemed so simple. She had accepted him then because she was so fond of him, and she knew everyone would be pleased, and also she was pleased herself. He was so young and jolly, and they had always fitted so well, though in his music--he was by way of being a young composer--he was out of her depth.