It was gone now, that wonderful sense of “belonging,” swept away in the swift rush of startled doubt.  Searching as it might, his mind could not find anywhere the faintest foothold for a belief that Desire, free to choose, should turn to him and not to another.

“I had better go and sleep this off somewhere,” murmured the professor with a wry smile.  “Mustn’t let it get ahead of me.  Mustn’t make any more mistakes.  This needs thinking out—­steady now!”

He tried to forget his own problem in thinking of hers.  It couldn’t be very pleasant for her—­this.  And yet she had been smiling as she came out of John’s office. perhaps she did not know yet?  On second thoughts, he felt sure that she did not know.  He recognized the essentials of Desire.  She was loyalty itself.  And had he not reason to know from his own present experience that the beginnings of love can be very blind.

John, too—­but with John it was different.  John had given his warning.  If the warning were to be justified he could not blame John.  He could not blame anyone save his own too confident self.  Why, oh why, had he been so sure?  Had he not known that love is the most unaccountable of all the passions?  How had he dared to build security on that subtle thing within himself which, without cause or reason, had claimed as his the unstirred heart of the girl he had married.

Spence returned home with lagging step.  The old distaste for familiar things, which he thought had gone with the coming of Desire, was heavy upon him.  The gate of his pleasant home shut behind him like a prison gate.  In short, Benis Spence paid for a moment’s enlightenment with a bad day and a night that was no better.

By the morning he had won through.  One must carry on.  And the advantage of a quiet manner is that no one notices when it grows more quiet.

Desire was already in the library when he entered it.  She looked very crisp and cool.  It struck Spence for the first time that she was dressing her part—­the neat, dark skirt and laundered blouse, blackbowed at the neck in a perfect orgy of simplicity, were eminently secretarial.  How beautifully young she was!

Desire looked up from her note-book with business-like promptitude.

“I think,” she said, “that we are quite ready to go on with the thirteenth chapter.”

“But I think,” said Benis, “that it would be much nicer to go fishing.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s Friday, for one thing.  Do you really think it safe to begin the thirteenth chapter on a Friday?”

His secretary’s smile was dutiful, but her lips were firm.  “We didn’t do a thing-yesterday,” she reminded him.  “I couldn’t find you anywhere and no one knew where you were.”

“I was—­just around,” vaguely.

“Not around here,” Desire was uncompromising.  “Benis, I think we should really be more businesslike.  We should have talked this thirteenth chapter over yesterday.  I see you have a note here for some opening paragraphs on The Apprehension of Color in Primitive Minds—­”