if she did not know, as she appeared not to know, that there were certain special hours when a man’s veins ran with fire and daring and power, in which ... well, in which he had a reasonable right to treat folk as he had treated that prying Barrett—­to shut them out completely....  But no:  up she popped, the thought of her, and ruined all.  Bright towering fabrics, by the side of which even those perfect, magical novels of which he dreamed were dun and grey, vanished utterly at her intrusion.  It was as if a fog should suddenly quench some fair-beaming star, as if at the threshold of some golden portal prepared for Oleron a pit should suddenly gape, as if a bat-like shadow should turn the growing dawn to mirk and darkness again....  Therefore, Oleron strove to stifle even the nascent thought of her.

Nevertheless, there came an occasion on which this woman Bengough absolutely refused to be suppressed.  Oleron could not have told exactly when this happened; he only knew by the glimmer of the street lamp on his blind that it was some time during the night, and that for some time she had not presented herself.

He had no warning, none, of her coming; she just came—­was there.  Strive as he would, he could not shake off the thought of her nor the image of her face.  She haunted him.

But for her to come at that moment of all moments!...  Really, it was past belief!  How she could endure it, Oleron could not conceive!  Actually, to look on, as it were, at the triumph of a Rival....  Good God!  It was monstrous! tact—­reticence—­he had never credited her with an overwhelming amount of either:  but he had never attributed mere—­oh, there was no word for it!  Monstrous—­monstrous!  Did she intend thenceforward....  Good God!  To look on!...

Oleron felt the blood rush up to the roots of his hair with anger against her.

“Damnation take her!” he choked....

But the next moment his heat and resentment had changed to a cold sweat of cowering fear.  Panic-stricken, he strove to comprehend what he had done.  For though he knew not what, he knew he had done something, something fatal, irreparable, blasting.  Anger he had felt, but not this blaze of ire that suddenly flooded the twilight of his consciousness with a white infernal light. That appalling flash was not his—­not his that open rift of bright and searing Hell—­not his, not his!  His had been the hand of a child, preparing a puny blow; but what was this other horrific hand that was drawn back to strike in the same place?  Had he set that in motion?  Had he provided the spark that had touched off the whole accumulated power of that formidable and relentless place?  He did not know.  He only knew that that poor igniting particle in himself was blown out, that—­Oh, impossible!—­a clinging kiss (how else to express it?) had changed on his very lips to a gnashing and a removal, and that for very pity of the awful odds he must cry out to her against whom he had lately raged to guard herself ... guard herself....