“You were rougher with me the first time I saw you, after all those years.  I met you with perfect confidence, remembering what you once were.  It was my first grown-up party.  I was only a fool of a girl, merely ignorant, unfit to be trusted with a liberty I’d never before had....  And I took one glass of champagne and it—­you know what it did....  And I was bewildered and frightened, and I told you; and—­you perhaps remember how my confidence in my old play-fellow was requited.  Do you?”

Reckless impulse urged her on.  Heart and pulses were beating very fast with a persistent desire to hurt him.  Her animation, brilliant colour, her laughter seemed to wing every word like an arrow.  She knew he shrank from what she was saying, in spite of his polite attention, and her fresh, curved cheek and parted lips took on a brighter tint.  Something was singing, seething in her veins.  She lifted her glass, set it down, and suddenly pushed it from her so violently that it fell with a crash.  A wave of tingling heat mounted to her face, receded, swept back again.  Confused, she straightened up in her chair, breathing fast. What was coming over her?  Again the wave surged back with a deafening rush; her senses struggled, the blood in her ran riot.  Then terror clutched her.  Neither lips nor tongue were very flexible when she spoke.

“Duane—­if you don’t mind—­would you go away now?  I’ve a wretched headache.”

He shrugged and stood up.

“It’s curious,” he said reflectively, “how utterly determined we seem to be to misunderstand each other.  If you would give me half a chance—­well—­never mind.”

“I wish you would go,” she murmured, “I really am not well.”  She could scarcely hear her own voice amid the deafening tumult of her pulses.  Fright stiffened the fixed smile on her lips.  Her plight paralysed her for a moment.

“Yes, I’ll go,” he answered, smiling.  “I usually am going somewhere—­most of the time.”

He picked up hat, gloves, and crop, looked down at her, came and stood at the table, resting one hand on the edge.

“We’re pretty young yet, Geraldine....  I never saw a girl I cared for as I might have cared for you.  It’s true, no matter what I have done, or may do....  But you’re quite right, a man of that sort isn’t to be considered”—­he laughed and pulled on one glove—­“only—­I knew as soon as I saw you that it was to be you or—­everybody.  First, it was anybody; then it was you—­now it’s everybody.  Good-bye.”

“Good-bye,” she managed to say.  The dizzy waves swayed her; she rested her cheeks between both hands and, leaning there heavily, closed her eyes to fight against it.  She had been seated on the side of a lounge; and now, feeling blindly behind her, she moved the cushions aside, turned and dropped among them, burying her blazing face.  Over her the scorching vertigo swept, subsided, rose, and swept again.  Oh, the horror of it!—­the shame, the agonised surprise.  What was this dreadful thing that, for the second time, she had unwittingly done?  And this time it was so much more terrible.  How could such an accident have happened to her?  How could she face her own soul in the disgrace of it?