Fennido was lyric against the baited Stegending’s silence. Stegending brooded and tried not to listen to the intimate badinage of Constance and her foil. His eyes rested glowering, stiff on this supple woman; wandered off to some dimmer focus. A strange sorrow pervaded his hard face, the sorrow of an animal rather than of a man. In this state, David almost liked him. He looked less wise, less strong, more full of life when he was full of this strange sorrow. Constance Bardale snatched him back from his withdrawal; with a word fixed his eyes once more on her. It was as if she needed him there in order to go on with Fennido. Stegending’s face sharpened, it fell again into its mold of human cunning: it was nearer this woman, farther from what David had cared for in him. Constance got up; she took May Delano by the hand and placed her glowing in her chair. She turned her back on the two men who watched her slipping from them as one stares at an impossible offense. “Well, Mr. Markand, are you coming to see me ever of your own accord, or will I always have to wait till there’s a dinner?” She sat beside him, bringing her chair still closer. She smiled with her full face and her sinuously deflected body. At once David knew that this which was happening to him was like the other things which he had watched. He was part of this buzzing world. But outside of it, so that he still could understand. “I think I shall come, Miss Bardale. It is awfully good of you....” “It is not good of me. I have no one in my place out of kindness. With me, I assure you, charity stops at home.” David flushed at the abrupt nakedness of her compliment. He gathered from the candor of her example the courage to look at her as she had looked at him. She was not beautiful. Her skin had a strange olive tinge: it was fleckless smooth: it was not transparent. Her hair was heavy, not fine. He noticed her wide short hands. Capable hands. The sense of her flesh, under the quiet silken sheath of her gown had a disquietude and a heat that won him. For the first time he realized how a woman whom he was able to know not beautiful could be desirable. She made a direct call upon his senses. His senses answered. “You can’t possibly like me, yet, Miss Bardale? You do not know me. Why, then, except to be polite----” She laughed. Her laughter went into words. His head was left out of it. She was a body. His own body told him. Suddenly her talk and his seemed remote from the main purpose of their nearness as if they stood in opposite corners of the room, tilting at each other with long sticks. He had to go on tilting. He could not come nearer. However inclined he was--and to his own amazement--to drop his guards.