He was thinking definitely while they drove on the much-trafficked road back to more gaudy lights and noise, the lights and noise of town; and he wondered how to fill the emptiness of his heart, how to appease the restless burning of his brain, and stifle before they could cry out all the dear things his soul wanted.  He looked at the woman by his side, insatiable, greedy, stupid, nothing to all appearances but a beautiful body, and he asked himself if she could do it, or if she could not.  And while he knew, right down in him, that she could not fulfil a fraction of his needs, he desired so much to believe that she could, that, in spite of his weariness with this miscalled business of pleasure, he made hot love to her all the way back.

Over the dinner-table at Pagani’s he advanced a farther step upon the road which he was resolved to walk with her, failing other companionship.

“Roselle,” he said, deliberately, “this isn’t enough.  How long are you going to play about with me like a beautiful pussy cat?  I’ve been very good, haven’t I?  When I think of what a good boy I’ve been I could laugh.”  He laughed deeply.  “You know, I could love you a lot.  Why don’t you give me a trial?  There isn’t anyone else, is there?”

He was amazed at himself to feel jealousy hot in him as he put the question.

There was no one else at the moment; but she sat thinking and playing with the stem of her wineglass, and keeping a half-cynical, half-simpering silence.  It was the veil with which she shrouded her stupidity while she debated the pros and cons with herself as deliberately as she had spoken.

“No,” she said at last, with a long, meaning look which meant nothing.  “No, there is no one else, Osborn.”  Her sigh ruffled the chiffons on her breast.

“I’m going to Paris for the firm next month; it’ll only be a week-end.  Come, too?  I’ll give you a good time.”

“I’ll see,” she murmured, her stupidity not dense enough to give a promise thus early.  A month?  A long, long while, an age, in which other things might turn up.

“So’ll I,” he said, looking into her eyes.  “I’ll see that you come.”

“I haven’t a rag to wear.”

“You’ll have all Paris to choose from.”

“I do want a couple of hats,” she said, with the worldly yet childish naivete of her class; “I’m going to Bristol in panto—­at Christmas, you know.”

“I’ll come down.”

She was conscienceless, like the rest of her type.  She knew, her observation had told her long ago, that this man had ties, domestic relations, duties; all of which mattered nothing to her.  Before her wants and desires, momentary though they might be, all considerations flew like thistledown before strong wind.

A Nero among women, like the rest of her pleasure-sisters, she was planned for destruction and she went upon her way destroying.  The loudest cry could not reach her, nor the greatest sorrow touch her; nor could broken hearts block the path to the most fleeting of her desires.