In that easy-going household, where comfort was obtained at the expense of appearances, there was always a diningroom fire in cold weather, and on this September morning the glow of the flames had a lulling effect.  Dead tired, he dropped asleep, to be roused by the feeling that there was some one in the room.  There was, it was Isabel; and in the drugged heaviness that follows daylight slumber Hyde simply held out his arms to her in oblivion of last night.  “Oh, oh!” said Isabel smiling at him and touching his palms with the tips of her fingers, “were you dreaming of me?” Hyde drew back, a deep flush covering his face.  What had changed Isabel? she was pure fascination.  “I’ve been watching you a long time while you were asleep.  I thought you would never wake.  You’re so, so tired!  Here’s a cup of coffee for you.”

“Thank you,” said Lawrence, entirely subdued.

He still felt half dazed:  confused and shy, emotions the harder to disguise because they were so unfamiliar:  and restless under Isabel’s merry eyes.  How near she was to him, the leaping flames flinging a dance of light and shadow over her silk shirt, and the bloom on her cheek, and the dark hair parted on one side (a boyish fashion which he had always disliked) and waved over her head!  So near that without rising he could have pressed his lips to that white throat of hers. . . .  Last night it had been beauty clouded, beauty averse, but this morning it was beauty in the most delicate and derisive and fleeting sunlight of pleasure; and the temperament of his race delivered Lawrence hand and foot into its power.  The deep waters went over him and he ceased to struggle—­“Isabel,” he heard himself saying in a level voice but without his own volition, “should you mind if I were to kiss you?”

What a banality to ask of a woman, his second self scoffed at him:  a woman who should be kissed or left alone, but never asked for a kiss!

“Not very much,” said Isabel, presenting her smooth cheek.  “Not if it would do you any good.”

Oh irony, oh disenchantment!  “Thank you.”  He curbed his passion and sat still.  “I am not Val.”

“Shut your eyes then.”

He held his breath:  the thick beating of his heart was like a muffled hammer.

“This isn’t the way I kiss Val.”

“Isabel!” exclaimed Lawrence.  He held out his arms again but they closed on the empty firelight:  she had gone dancing off, the most fugitive, the most insubstantial of mistresses, nothing left of her to him but the memory of that moth’s wing touch.

“Isabel, come here!” He, sprang to his feet.  From the other end of the room Isabel turned round, wistful, her head bent, glancing up at him under her eyelashes.

“Oh must you have me?—­all of me?  Oh Lawrence!—­well then—­”

She advanced step by step, slowly.  Lawrence waited, convinced that if he tried to seize her she would be gone, such a vague thistledown grace there was in her slender immaturity.  He waited and Isabel came to him, drifted into his arms, was lying for a moment on his breast, and then, “Let me go:  dearest, don’t hold me!”