Her eye-lids flickered as her deep voice droned the words out. “You should put all that in the past tense, Fiesole. I’m not counting anything to-night, penalties or pleasures. I’m just a man who’s wakened. I want something madly. Whatever it costs me or anybody else, I intend to get it.” “You always wanted what you couldn’t have.” She spoke lazily, blowing smoke-rings into the air, following them with her eyes and watching how they broke before they reached the ceiling. She appeared untouched by my emotion, as though nothing had been said that intimately concerned herself. She let her gaze wander, extending her lithe sweet length luxuriously, as though she had nothing to fear from my passion. I was crazed with desire, for all that I kept my tones quiet and steady. She maddened me with her indifference. It was all pretense--I knew it. She was playing a part with me, courting the inevitable, tempting me to reveal my hidden self. I watched her with clenched hands--suffering, yet finding fierce joy in the wonderful pride of her body. I would not have had her otherwise; the colder she appeared, the more I coveted her. I could have had her once for my wife, I reflected, had I chosen. I had tormented her; it was just that I should suffer. The reticence of years fell away from me. I was kneeling at her side, kissing her unshod feet, her hands, her hair. Words tumbled from my lips, broken and unconsidered. I called her by foolish names such as are only used between lovers. I poured my heart out, speaking of the past and the future. I cursed myself, all the time repeating how I worshiped her--how I had loved her from a boy, but had come to know it only now. And she gave no sign of response: neither forbidding, nor assenting; letting me have my way with her without acknowledging my presence; a quiet smile playing round her lips; as completely mistress of herself as is a statue. I trembled into silence. She drooped forward, bending over me, just as she had done years ago in her uncle’s summer-house. “My dear, there are things that are offered only once. Five years ago I asked you for all that you are now asking. You were afraid of the price, as you were with the other woman. You refused me.” “But it’s marriage I’m asking.” “Ah! Then I asked for less.---- I’m sorry. You ought to have gone when I told you. I felt that I should have to wound you.” Her gentle dignity stung me into strength. My turbulence died down. As I knelt, I flung my arms around her body and drew her to me. She struggled to draw back, but I held her so closely that my lips were almost on her mouth.