She laughed with childish _abandon_. He took her fragile, sinuous, pulsing body in his arms--she was very light--and lifted her till she was high above his head. She was laughing, and found it hard to balance her body with his arms so tightly about her knees. The _portière_ fell from her hands, and lay in a huddled mass at their feet. She fought bitterly with herself, in the space of that one short gasp, but something--she scarcely knew what--confounded her better judgment. She looked one second down into his white face and their eyes met. Then her body drooped limply down to him, deeper and deeper, into his arms; and her head, with all its wealth of tumbled gold, fell just over his shoulder, against his face. The next moment _portière_ and the world were forgotten, and without knowing it she was offering him her mouth, and he was holding her limp and sobbing body close in his arms and kissing her warm lips again and again. She struggled feebly against him at first, and tried to say that she must go. But the speech died down into a murmur, and she could only sob weakly: "I can't help it! I can't help it!" For one last moment she panted to be free, and then the violet eyelids sank wearily over the happy eyes, and she lay even closer, and very still, in his arms. A sudden knock on the outer door startled them both back to a forgotten world. She caught at her hair, and tried to twist it decently about her head once more. He went to the door and opened it. It was Thomas, the coachman, come for Miss Cordelia. CHAPTER XV THE MILL AND ITS GRIST She dreamed not of the fight he fought Till lo, he crept again To her, with all his vows forgot---- Then, then she knew his pain. JOHN HARTLEY, "The Broken Knight." Humor is the tail to the kite of affection.--"The Silver Poppy." "Oh, I'm disgusted with myself, with everything," said Hartley, impatiently going to his window, where through the drifting rain he could see the misty gray Palisades of the Hudson and a little scattered fleet of sailing craft dropping down with the tide. Then he went as impatiently back to his chair again. "What's gone wrong?" asked Repellier, who had run up for a few minutes when the darkness of the day had put a stop to his work to see how Hartley was taking to his new quarters. "Is it the engine itself out of order? Are you feeling fit, and all that?" "Confound it, I don't know _what_ it is!" "You're comfortable enough here?" "Yes, I suppose so." "No disquieting neighbors?" asked the other, casually glancing at a new photograph of the author of The Silver Poppy in a heavy silver frame that stood on Hartley's mantelpiece. "You know you're too young to indulge in the luxuries--just yet." "How do you mean?" asked Hartley, pulling himself together. "I thought you might be falling in love. Young men have a habit of doing that, you know." "No, no; it's not that."