Apart from her now as he had never been, he wanted the warmth of her nearness. His resolution to break off was a dim thing. He could not understand it. He sat there and had forgotten it. This helped not at all. Her way with him was beyond the mutability of a resolve. It seemed a natural condition. It was as if she had looked on him never closer before. She was a lady with all the aloofness of her sex: not one to let him fling off her clothes, let him lie beside her. The hope was monstrous of what once, without hope, had been fact. It was over.... In his chagrin he could not find the comfort even of supposing that she had sensed his decision and simply gone before him. He could not lave his hurt in the thought that his long silence, with her in Europe, was perhaps an introduction she had understood to her own course. He was like a child: so aware of his own grievance, and of the sanctity of his mood, he had no knowledge of hers. Like a child he came away, routed, fascinated, fingering over and nursing his several hurts. But, looking back, what humiliated David most was not these bruises to his pride--was rather the dispatch with which he had recovered from them. Neither the revelation of the little girl had held him, nor the shaming lesson at the hands of Constance: neither inspiration nor defeat. He had a slow pervading sense of his unchastened nature.... He dined with Caroline Lord. No rare occurrence; but this time Constance was no more, and for the first time Miss Lord said: “Let’s try to amuse _ourselves_ for a change. What do you say? Don’t you think it’s a confession of no resources to be always going to the theaters? You have never been to my apartment. Come and see _me_, to-night.” They walked up a residential avenue east of Central Park, where the cars swerved swift and remote between sedate, slow houses. They climbed a high brownstone stoop. They passed through a corridor echoing faintly with their steps. She lighted a table lamp. Color spread out from the emerald-silk shade above a tidy stack of magazines, showed the room close and impeccably neat. Each chair was in its place. The broad couch with its upstanding cushions was smoothed of wrinkles. Gray curtains stood discreetly before tall windows. It was a cool room, methodically pitched. David found himself not terrified by its neatness. Miss Lord seemed to be glad when he sank down on the couch and rumpled it. He let his head lean against a steel-engraving on the wall. They both laughed. A new Miss Lord. She was letting David talk. She was silent, so the “moral tone” was silent. Her body spoke and after all it was a lovely body.