He had given her several evenings, and had put himself out to cater to her eager demand to see life and burn the night away in crowds and noise.

He had treated her, this young, new thing, as he was in the habit of treating any beautiful woman with whom he was on the verge of an affair and who realized the art of give and take.

But more than ever she conveyed the impression of sex detachment to which he was wholly unaccustomed.

He might have been any inarticulate lad of her own age, useful as a companion, to be ordered to fetch and carry, dance or walk, go or come.

At that moment there was no woman in the city for whom he would undergo the boredom and the bruising and the dementia of such a place as the one to which she had drawn him.