“So, honey, jest play in your own backyard, Don’t mind what dem white chiles say.” He stooped lower over her closed eyes and murmuring lips. She seemed aware of him; she turned her face aside. He brushed her cool cheek and thrilled to the touch of it. He waited. She still sang softly with her eyes fast shut, as though advising him: “So, honey, jest play in your own backyard.” Over and over she hummed the line. He crept back into his place in the darkness. When they had drawn up before the apartment and he had jumped to the pavement to help her out, she whispered reproachfully, “Meester Deek, you did get out quickly.” Then, as they said good-by, “It’s been the nicest time we’ve ever had.” It was only after she had vanished that he asked himself what she had meant, “You did get out quickly.” At the last moment was she going to have kissed him, or to have given him her lips to kiss? And, “The nicest time we’ve ever had”--did she know that he had been trembling to ask her to marry him? When he got back to the Brevoort he destroyed the letter he had written to Hal. His optimism was aflame; soon he would have something better to write him. He fell asleep that night with the coolness of her cheek upon his lips. CHAPTER XII--ARCADY His first sensation on awaking next morning was of that stolen kiss. All night he had been dreaming of it. All night he had been conscious of the porcelain smoothness of her hand held closely in his own. He closed his eyes against the amber shaft of sunlight which streamed from the window across the counterpane. He strove to recall those dreams; but the harder he strove the dimmer grew the lamps in the haunted chamber of remembrance. He saw vague shapes, which receded from him and melted. Since dreams failed him, he flung wide the windows of imagination. He saw himself walking with his arm about her, between pollarded trees along a silver road. She clung against his breast like a blown spray of lilac. Now he was stretched at her feet in the greenest of green meadows, while above the curve of her knees her brooding smile watched him. He pictured her, always in new landscapes of more than earthly beauty, enacting a hundred scenes of uninterrupted tenderness. The burden of his longing made him weary. Until he had kissed her, he had had no real understanding of what love meant; she had been to him an idea--an enchanting, disembodied spirit. Now she was white and warm, exquisitely clothed with glowing flesh. It was not the magic cloak any longer, but Desire herself, sweetly perverse and wilfully cold, that he worshiped.