"I know, but it's dangerous. You were splendidly right when you bade me move from that garden just now. The road was waiting. It is so with states of the soul. The limpet is the lowest of organisms. Movement is everything. One life may seem to be like sunlight moving over sombre ground and another like the shadow of a cloud traversing a sunlit space. But both have meaning and value. Never strike an average and imagine you have found content. The average life is nothing but a pudding in a fog!" Lothian had been talking very earnestly, his eyes full of light, fixed on her eyes. And now, in a moment, he saw what had been there for many minutes, he saw what he had roused. He was startled. During this delightful evening that side of their intercourse had not been very present in his mind. She was a delightful flower, a flower with a mind. It is summed up very simply. _He had never once wanted to touch her._ His face changed and grew troubled. A new presence was there, a problem rose where there had been none before. The realisation of her physical loveliness and desirability came to him in a flood of new sensation. The strong male impulse was alive and burning for the first time that night. A waiter had brought a silver dish of big peaches, and as she ate the fruit there was that in her eyes which he recognised, though he knew her mind was unconscious of it. In the sudden stir and tumult of his thoughts, one became dominant. It was an evil thought, perhaps the most subtle and the most evil that can come to a man. The pride of intellect in its most gross and devilish manifestation awoke. He was not a vain man. He did not usually think much about his personal appearance and charm. But he knew how changed in outward aspect he was becoming. His glass told him that every morning at shaving time. His vice was marking him. He was not what he was, not what he should and might be, in a physical regard. And girls, he knew, were generally attracted by physical good-looks in a man. Young Dickson Ingworth, for instance, seemed able to pick and choose. Lothian had often laughed at the boyish and conceited narratives of his prowess. And now, to the older man came the realisation that his age, his growing corpulence, need mean nothing at all--if he willed it so. A girl like this, a pearl among maidens, could be dominated by his intellect. He knew that he was not mistaken. Over a fool, however lovely and attractive by reason of her sex, he would have no power. But here . . . An allurement more dazzling than he had thought life held was suddenly shown him. There was an honest horror, a shudder and recoil of all the good in him from this monstrous revelation, so sudden, so unexpected. He shuddered and then found an instant compromise. It could not concern _himself_, it never should. But it might be regarded--just for a few brief moments!--from a detached point of view, as if it had to do with some one else, some creation of a fiction or a poem.