"Yes." The flame went out of his eyes, leaving them cold and hard as agate. "We've got to be straight. But--telling him isn't your job. It's mine." He heaved himself up from the settee; and she had her first glimpse of a different Ronnie--a fighting Ronnie, chin protruded, lips set. "My job," he repeated. "I'm not Andromeda. I don't want a Perseus to free me from the dragon." She tried chaff; but chaff left him unmoved. She tried argument; but argument only strengthened the resolve in him. Finally she said: "There's no need to say much. Hector knows everything--except your name." "You told him?" There was no anger in the phrase. "Everything except your name. We had a quarrel. After I got home last Monday. He offered to let me divorce him if--if I'd promise there was no one else." She, too, rose--her face, for all its fineness, obstinate as her lover's. "Of course, I couldn't promise that. So to-night, I shall just tell him--the rest." The tall man and the little woman faced each other in silence: each equally determined to carry, right from the beginning, the other's burden. "It doesn't seem right, somehow or other," Ronnie said at last. "He might--might hurt you." "Hurt me!" laughed Aliette. "Nothing, nobody in the world can hurt me now. Except you. And you will hurt me if you insist. Don't insist, Ronnie." "Very well." His hands, thrilling to passion once again, clasped her waist. He kissed her; and this time she did not seek to elude him. For now she knew her power, the power which all women exercise over imaginative lovers; knew that, at her least word, he would loose her--fearful lest, by not loosing, he forfeit the greater gift. And all through the half-hour which followed, that power, that fear was on Ronnie. He was afraid of forfeiting this Aliette who had let him hold her in his arms; who had let him press his lips to hers in passion; but who, admitting her love for him, could yet sit aloof--a goddess with a time-table. "I shall take Caroline," she said. "You don't mind?" He only wanted to take Aliette, there and then; to kiss those rounded wrists, those arms bare to the elbow, that scarlet mouth, those cheeks ivory as curds, the smooth forehead under its loops of shining hair. "Kiss me!" he whispered. "Kiss me!" "Ronnie!" She put down the time-table. "Don't let's do anything we might--might regret. Remember that to-night, and perhaps for many nights, I must sleep under his roof." He yielded again; and a few minutes later she prepared to leave him. The plans they had meant to make were still chaotic--chaotic as her mind. She realized, as she pinned on her hat, as she let him help her into her coat, that the sweet hour had been full of danger, that--had Ronnie been less chivalrous, more the man and less the boy--she might have given way to him. The realization made her very humble; and in her humility she began to doubt herself.