"I dunno--just as I did the first time, when I tore through the woods and found you on the hill." "Isn't that wonderful! Do you suppose I shall always be able to get you when I want you very much ?" "Yes, always." "Why ?" She had gone back into the dressing room.

The light was on her face.
Her usual expression of elfish impertinence was not there.

She was the girl of the stolen meetings once more, the girl whose eyes reflected the open beauty of what Martin had called the big cathedral.

For all that, she was the girl who had hurt him to the soul, shown him her door, played that trick upon him at the Ritz and sent him adrift full of the spirit of "Who cares ?" which was her fetish.

It was in his heart to say: "Because I adore you! Because I am so much yours that you have only to think my name for me to hear it across the world as if you had shouted it through a giant megaphone! Because whatever I do and whatever you do, I shall love you!" But she had hurt him twice.