There were the fears, shy, ridiculous but now amusingly so, not even shameful when with another faint gust of laughter Clarissa helped him again. Time thereafter was measured in roaring heartbeats, in the grotesque innocent throes where Ben at last discovered a strength that was his own, a sureness and a rightness. Some part of him could still observe at the very crests of the waves. He could see, perhaps pity, her rich mouth squared down as in suffering, her brown dear face suddenly drenched in tears and twisting from side to side, and yet know that nothing of this could be held back, nor softened, nor in any way denied, and that pain was of no importance whatever until the cup should be drained. He was aware of most of the words she spoke--random and wild, fantastic or pitiable, they all owned a rightness in the moment and were a part of the climbing waves. "O God, hurt me! Set thy mark on me, Benjamin, Benjamin. I want thy seed. _À moi!_ Now! Now! Benjamin--thy bright mouth--_ainsi je vais, je vais avec toi jusqu'à la fin de la terre._" Out of limitless quiet, his face on her satin shoulder, Ben asked: "Have I hurt thee?" "No. Yes...." And again with the faintest moth-wing touch of laughter: "No...." He drew away from her; presently sat up and saw her lying still, with wet cheeks and closed eyes, near and defenseless, wholly quiet. She said: "I will not yet open my eyes." And she did not, even when--timidly this time and bewildered at his own impulse--Ben curved his hand over the golden round of her breast where fading sunlight lay across it. "Clarissa, forgive me." She looked at him then, pools of darkness opening, filling with amazement, then sorrow, then showing him such a remote and ruminative blankness that Ben was frightened as a child, for it seemed to him that what his own voice had said was monstrous, and nothing said now or later could redeem it. She stood, unconcerned at her nakedness, looking down at him he knew, the abyss between self and self widening. At length she asked with much coolness: "What does that mean?" "Clarissa, I did never intend"----_Oh, close my mouth, anything I say makes it worse, and I go on spilling words_--"We were swept away--I never intended--I've--sinned--betrayed----" He managed to stop the noise. She was silent; he could not even hear her breathing. Forced by the silence to look up at last, he found as he had known he would the high blaze of contempt. "Sin? Betrayal?..." Then--he had known this too and feared it more than anything else--contempt and anger were gone, closed away altogether by a mask impenetrable and cruelly polite. The mask said gently: "Shall I help you with your clothes, Mr. Cory?" He thought with a resentment that could accomplish nothing: Nay, I didn't deserve that.