“O Hell!” said Ramon to himself. But aloud he proposed that they should drive to an adjacent hill-top from which the lights of the town could be seen. When he had parked the car on this vantage point and lit a cigarette, Dora began a narrative of a kind with which he was thoroughly familiar. She was of that well-known type of woman who is found in a dubious position, but explains that she has known better days. Her father had been a judge in Kansas, the family had been wealthy, she had never known what work was until she got married, her marriage had been a tragedy, her husband had drank, there had been a smash-up, the family had met with reverses. On and on went the story, its very tone and character and the grammar she used testifying eloquently to the fact that she was no such crushed violet as she claimed to be. Ramon was bored. A year ago he would have been more tolerant, but now he had experienced feminine charm of a really high order, and all the vulgarity and hypocrisy of this woman was apparent to him. And yet as he sat beside her he was keenly, almost morbidly conscious of the physical attraction of her fine young body. For all her commonness and coarseness, he wanted her with a peculiarly urgent desire. Here was the heat of love without the flame and light, desire with no more exaltation than accompanies a good appetite for dinner. He was puzzled and a little disgusted.… He did not understand that this was his defeated love, seeking, as such a love almost inevitably does, a vicarious satisfaction. Repugnance and desire struggled strangely within him. He was half-minded to take her home and leave her alone. At any rate he was not going to sit there and listen to her insane babble all night. To put his fortunes to the test, he abruptly took her in his arms. She made a futile pretence of resistance. When their lips touched, desire flashed up in him strongly, banishing all his hesitations. He talked hot foolishness to which she listened greedily, but when he tried to take her to Salvini’s again, she insisted on going home. Before he left her he had made another appointment. Now began an absurd contest between the two in which Ramon was always manœuvring to get her alone somewhere so that he might complete his conquest if possible, while her sole object was to have him gratify her vanity by appearing in public with her. This he knew he could not afford to do. He could not even drive down the street with her in daylight without all gossips being soon aware he had done so. No one knew much about her, of course, but she was “one of those eating house girls” and to treat her as a social equal was to court social ostracism. He would win the enmity of the respectable women of the town, and he knew very well that respectable women rule their husbands. His prospects in business and politics, already suffering, would be further damaged.