Thought, which had ceased when her lips met his in the first quick throb of passion, stirred vaguely, and awoke.

And, far within her, somewhere in confused obscurity, her half-stunned senses began groping again toward reason.
"Louis!" "Dearest one!" "I ought to go.

Will you take me home?
It is morning--do you realise it ?" She lifted her head, cleared her eyes with one slender wrist, pushing back the disordered hair.

Then gently disengaging herself from his arms, and still busy with her tumbled hair, she looked up at the dial of the ancient clock which glimmered red in the firelight.
"Morning--and a strange new year," she said aloud, to herself.

She moved nearer to the clock, watching the stiff, jerking revolution of the second hand around its lesser dial.
Hearing him come forward behind her, she dropped her head back against him without turning.
"Do you see what Time is doing to us ?--Time, the incurable, killing us by seconds, Louis--eating steadily into the New Year, devouring it hour by hour--the hours that we thought belonged to us." She added, musingly: "I wonder how many hours of the future remain for us." He answered in a low voice: "That is for you to decide." "I know it," she murmured.