Gilbert Penny shot an obvious, humorous glance at Myrtle.  She did not meet it, but sat with lowered gaze.  Caroline made a daring “nose” at Howat; but he too failed to acknowledge her message.  David’s affair had sunk from his thoughts.  The drawing room was brilliantly lighted:  there was a constant stir of peacock silk, of yellow and apple green and coral lutestring, of white shoulders, in the gold radiance of candles like stiff rows of narcissi.  Caroline drifted finally into the chamber back of the dining room, and they could hear the tenuous vibrations of the clavichord.  Soon David had disappeared.  The elder Penny discovered Myrtle seated sullenly at her mother’s side; and, taking her arm, he escorted her in the direction of the suddenly silenced music.

Ludowika sat on a small couch away from the fireplace.  She smiled at Howat as he moved closer to her.  She never did things with her hands, he noticed, like the women of his family, embroidery or work on little heaps of white.  She sat motionless, her arms at rest.  His mother seemed far away.  The pounding recommenced unsteadily at his wrists, the room wavered in his vision.  Ludowika permeated him like a deep draught of intoxicating, yellow wine.  He had a curious sensation of floating in air, of tea roses.  It was clear that, folded in happy contentment, she still realized nothing....  She must know now, any minute.  Howat saw that his mother had gone.

He rose and stood before Ludowika, leaning slightly over her.  She raised her gaze to his; her interrogation deepened.  Then her expression changed, clouded, her lips parted; she half raised a hand.  Her breast rose and fell, sharply, once.  Howat picked her up by the shoulders and crushed her, silk and cool gauze and mouth, against him.  Ludowika’s skirts billowed about, half hid, him; a long silence, a long kiss.

Her head fell back with a sigh, she drooped again upon the sofa.  She hadn’t struggled, exclaimed; even now there was no revolt in her countenance, only a deep trouble.  “Howat,” she said softly, “you shouldn’t have done that.  It was brutal, selfish.  You—­you knew, after all that I told you; the premonition—­” she broke off, anger shone brighter in her eyes.  “How detestable men are!” She turned away from him, her profile against the brocade of the sofa.  Unexpectedly he was almost cold, and self-contained; he saw the gilded angle of a frame on the wall, heard the hickory disintegrating on the hearth.

He had kissed her as a formal declaration; what must come would come.  “I was an imbecile,” she spoke in a voice at once listless and touched with bitterness; “Arcadia,” she laughed.  “I thought it was different here, that you were different; that feeling in my heart—­but it’s gone now, dead.  I suppose I should thank you.  But, do you know, I regret it; I would rather have stayed at St. James all my life and kept that single little delusion, longing.  The premonition was nonsense, too; nothing new, unexpected, can happen.  Kisses are almost the oldest things in the world, kisses and their results.  What is there to be afraid of?  You see, I learned it all quite young.