She slipped her arm through mine and drew me aside. The porter went forward to engage the cabby. “Give me one more night alone with Dorrie,” she whispered. “Everything has been so--so hurried. You understand, dearest, don’t you?” I helped her into the four-wheeler and lifted Dorrie after her. Having told the man to drive to the _Cecil_, I was about to enter. She checked me. “We shall be able to get on all right.” Then, in the darkness of the cab, her arms went passionately about my neck, and, all pretense abandoned, I felt her warm lips pressed against my mouth. As the door banged Dorrie roused. Seeing me standing on the platform, she stretched her arms out of the window, crying, “Oh, I fought you was toming wiv’ us, Dante.” “Not to-night, darling,” said Vi. “To-morrow,” I promised her. Then to Vi, “I’ll be round at the _Cecil_ shortly after ten. Will that do?” She nodded. I watched them drive away, after which I jumped into a hansom and set off to pay Pope Lane a surprise visit. I could not sleep that night; was making plans. The haste with which this step had been approached and taken had terrified Vi. I had been unwise. Her sensitiveness had been shocked by the raw way in which a desire takes shape in action. And the man by the harbor had upset her. I must get her away to a cottage in the country, where we could be alone, and where she would have time to grow accustomed to our altered relations. Next morning, full of these arrangements, I sought her at the _Hotel Cecil_. She was not there; the office had no record of her. I remembered that her boxes had been left at Liverpool Street overnight. When I got there and made inquiries of the clerk, I found that the lady I described had been to the baggage-room an hour before me and had claimed them. After much difficulty I hunted out the cabman who had driven her. He showed me alcoholic sympathy, at once divining the irregularity of our relations, and told me that the lady had countermanded my orders and instructed him to drive her to the _Hotel Thackeray_. I arrived at the _Hotel Thackeray_ in time to be informed that she had already left. Four days later I received a letter which had been sent on from Ransby. It was from Vi, despatched with the pilot from the ship on which she was sailing to America. She had not dared to see me again, she said. She was running away from the temptation to be selfish. She had reckoned up the price which her husband, Dorrie, and myself would have to pay that she might gain her happiness; she had no right to exact it. As far as her husband and Dorrie were concerned, if we had done what we had contemplated, we should have shattered something for them which we could never replace. She was going back to do her duty. That the task might not be made too difficult, she begged me not to write. CHAPTER X--PUPPETS OF DESIRE