To this ultimatum she kept rigidly in spite of her lover’s protests and pleas and threats.  She was inexorable.  If Alan wanted to see her at all he must do it on her terms.  He yielded perforce and was madder over her than ever, feted and worshiped and adored her inordinately when he was with her, deluged her with flowers and poetry and letters between times, called her up daily and nightly by telephone just to hear her voice, if he might not see her face.

So superficially Tony conquered.  But she was not over-proud of her victory.  She knew that whether she saw Alan or not he was always in the under-current of her thoughts and feelings.  In the midst of other occupations she caught herself wondering whether he had written her, whether she would find his flowers when she got home, where he was, what he was doing, if he was thinking of her as she of him.  She wanted him most irrationally when she forbade his coming to her.  She looked forward to those few hours spent with him as the only time when she was fully alive, dreamed them over afterward, knew they meant a hundredfold more to her than those she spent with any other man or woman.  She wore his flowers, pored over his long, beautiful, impassioned letters, devoured the books of poetry he sent her, danced with him as often and as long as she dared, gave her soul more and more into his keeping, the more so perhaps in that he was so tenderly reverential of her body, never even touching her lips with his, though his eyes often told a less moderate story.

The orgy over she was again doing well with her work at the school.  She knew that.  Her teachers praised her gifts and her progress.  Without any vanity she could not help seeing that she was forging ahead of others who had started even with her, had more real talent perhaps than most of those with whom she worked and played.  But she took no pride in these things.  For equally clearly she saw that she was not doing half what she might have done, would have done, had there been no Alan Massey in the city and in her heart.  She had a divided allegiance and a divided allegiance is a hard thing to live with as a daily companion.

But she would not have had it otherwise.  Not for a moment did she ever wish to go back to those free days when love was but a name and the flame had not blown so dangerously near.

As for Alan Massey himself, he alternated between moods which were starry pinnacles of ecstasy and others which were bottomless pits of despair.  He lived for two things only—­his hours with Tony and his work.  For he had begun to paint again, magnificently, furiously, with all his old power and a new almost godlike one added to it.  As an artist it was his supreme hour.  He painted as he had never painted before.