All fat men are prone to nervous emotion; Belter got up briskly, but his features were working, and he merely waved his hand in adieu and galloped off down stairs to be in time to join his wife when she emerged from her seance with the white circus horse in Helen’s outer workshop. Cleland, still lingering with fluttering solicitude over his manuscript, heard a step on the stair and Stephanie’s fresh young voice in gay derision: "You’re like a fussy old hen, Jim! Let that chick alone and take me somewhere to lunch! I’ve had a strenuous lesson and I’m starved——" She dodged his demonstration, eluding him with swift grace, and put the desk between them. "No! _No_! I chanced, just now, to witness the meeting of the Belters, and that glimpse of conjugal respectability has stiffened my moral backbone.... Besides, I’m deeply worried about you, Jim." "About me?" "Certainly. It fills me with anxiety that you should so far degrade yourself as to attempt to kiss a respectable married woman——" She dodged again, just in time, but he vaulted over the desk and she found herself imprisoned in his arms. "I’ll submit if you don’t rumple me," she said. "I’ve such a darling gown on—be very circumspect, Jim——" She lifted her face and met his lips, retained them with a little sigh, placing her gloved hands behind his head. They became very still, very serious; her grey eyes grew vague under his deep gaze which caressed them; her arms drew his head closer to her face. Then, very slowly, their lips parted, and she laid her hand on his shoulder and drew his arm around her waist. In silence they paced the studio for a while, slowly, and in leisurely step with each other deeply preoccupied. "Steve," he said, "it’s the first week in June. The city will be intolerable in a fortnight. Don’t you think that we ought to open Runner’s Rest?" "You are going up there with Oswald, aren’t you?" she asked, raising her eyes. "Yes, in a day or two. Don’t you think we’d better try to get some servants and open the house for the summer?" She considered the matter: "You know I’ve never been there since you went abroad, Jim. I believe we would find it delightful. Don’t you?" "I do, indeed." "But—is it going to be all right—just you and I alone there? ... You know even when we considered each other as brother and sister there was a serious question about our living together unless an older woman were installed"—she laughed—"to keep us in order. It was silly, then, but—I don’t know whether it’s superfluous now." "Would Helen come?" "Like a shot! Of _course_ that’s the solution. We can have parties, too.... I wonder what is going to happen to us." "What!" "To you and me, Jim.... It’s becoming such a custom—your arm around me this way; and that secret and deliciously uneasy thrill I feel when I come to you alone—and all my increasing load of guilt——" "There’s only one end to it, Steve."