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you think she minds my being here? Wouldn’t she want you to be happy? Jimmy! Kiss me!”

She held up her lips invitingly and leaned against him. One hand crept slowly around his neck. She pressed her body against his, her eyes luminous with promise of surrender.

Harley looked into her upturned face, fascinated, seeing her clearly for the first time, revolted that he could ever have loved this courtesan. Slow fury kindled in his face.

He stiffened, and struck her cheek with his open hand viciously, calling her a vile name.

Patricia reeled against the wall with the force of the blow, and the frame of a small etching cut her lip slightly. As she pressed the back of her hand to the hurt she heard the front door slam.

Harley had fled the house.

She looked at the smear of blood on her hand with whimsical philosophy, and smiled rather wistfully.

“And that’s that,” she said to the clock on the mantel. “If he had kissed me, instead of doing what he did, I might have strangled him.”

She went into the bedroom in search of a handkerchief; and, having found one, she dabbed her lip in the intervals between the packing of her gowns into the portmanteau and the cabin trunk. She laughed as she packed the pyjamas.

“Crushed! Buried! Burned!” she said, kneeling on the trunk in order to fasten it. “His imagination is still sound. Please God he finds the little things alive and unhurt. If he doesn’t—well, we shall see; although I doubt his stomach will endure me after this exhibition.”

She adjusted her hat carefully at the mirror, and smoothed her collar with light, deft touches. A close examination of her injured lip assured her that the hurt was negligible. A few expert dabs with the tiny puff from her bag and it was invisible. She took a final look around the room to make sure that