"That doesn't exactly express it," he answered. "The truth is, I don't derive sufficient enjoyment from skipping about on one or both legs at the end of a racket, making frantic attempts to stop a ball which the other side is making equally frantic and fruitless efforts to drive at me through a net. As a dispassionate observer, the essence of the game seems to me to consist in sending the ball against the net as hard and as frequently as practicable." At this the visitor spluttered, and, being of the softer sex, declared that he must be a most dreadful cynic; and Lilith, who was near enough to hear his remarks, turned her head, with a rippling flash of mirth in her eyes, and said "Thank you!" which diversion indeed caused her to perform the very feat he had been so whimsically describing. Presently, growing tired of talking, he withdrew from the others. It happened that there was a book in the drawing room which had caught his attention during a former visit; and now he sought it, and taking it up from the table, stood there alone in the cool shaded room turning from page to page, absorbed in comparing passages of its contents. Then a light step, a rustle of skirts, a lilt of song--which broke off short as he raised his eyes. Lilith was passing through, her tennis racket still in her hand. Slightly flushed with her recent exercise, she looked radiantly sweet, in her dark, brilliant beauty. "Oh, I didn't know anyone was here; least of all, you," she said. "You startled me." "Sorceress, remove those unholy spells; for thou art indeed good to look upon this day." She flashed a smile at him, throwing back her head with that slight, quick movement which constituted in her a very subtile and potent charm. "Flatterer! Do you think so? Well, I am glad." She dropped her hand down upon his, as it rested on the table, with a swift, light, caressing pressure, and her eyes softened entrancingly as they looked up into his. Then she was gone. He stood there, cool, immovable, self-possessed, outwardly still to all appearance intent upon the book which he held. But in reality he saw it not. His whole mental faculties were called into play to endeavour imagination to retain that soft, light pressure upon his hand. His resources of memory were concentrated upon the picture of her as she stood there a moment since,--lovely, smiling, enchanting,--and then the sombre brain-wave, reminding of the hopelessness, the mockery of life's inexorable circumstance, would roll in upon his mind; and heart would seem tightened, crushed, strangled with a pain that was actually physical--of such acuteness indeed, that, had that organ been weak, he would be in danger of falling dead on the spot. And this was a part of the penalty he had to pay for his well-nigh superhuman self-control.