And for a space she existed in an iridescent dream of happiness, without sense of relation to a material world, forgetful of the flight of time, lost to everything but her lover’s arms and voice and lips.

It might have been five minutes, it might have been sixty, before she became aware that Karslake was gently disengaging her hands.  “Dearest, dearest!” she heard him say.  “We must be sensible.  That was the front door, I’m afraid.”

The meaning in his insistence presently began to penetrate, if vaguely, and she suffered him to go from her a pace or two.  But, still a little blind with the beauty of the revelation that had been granted unto her, nothing that met her gaze seemed to be in true focus except her lover’s face:  even the countenance of Victor swam into her ken as if blurred by veils of mist, its dour, forbidding look had no significance to her intelligence.  Victor himself, for that matter, was a figure without real consequence other than as a symbol of the old order, the tedious old ways of the world from which she had magically escaped.

A ring of sarcastic apology provided the only clue she got to the import of Victor’s words.  Sobered a trifle, her mental processes somewhat less incoherent, still she knew she would hardly regain her poise until she was alone.  And breathing an excuse, she left the room with such dignity as she could muster.

In the hall, with the closed door behind her, she paused to collect herself.  Then she missed furs and gloves and handbag and, remembering that she had left them in the study, for some obscure reason imagined she must have them before proceeding to her room.

Much more mistress of herself by now, it never occurred to Sofia that there could be any reason why she should hesitate about returning or feel embarrassed before Victor.  True, he had surprised them, Sofia was not at all sure he hadn’t actually seen her in Karslake’s arms.  But what of that?  Love like hers was nothing to be ashamed of; and that Victor could reasonably object to her giving her heart to one of his secretaries was something far from her thought just then.

She put a hand to the knob, turned it, and swung the door open—­all on impulse—­then faltered, transfixed by the tableau before the fireplace.

The door was silent on its hinges, and Karslake’s back was to her.  Victor, on the other hand, facing both Karslake and the door, unquestionably saw Sofia, but pretended not to, and had his say out with Karslake in a manner bitterly cynical.

“... sadly in error if you flatter yourself I pay you a wage to make love to Sofia behind my back.”

“Sorry, sir.”  Karslake’s tone was level, respectful but firm.  “Your instructions were, I believe, to win her confidence.  Well—­I have always found love the one sure key to a woman’s confidence.  Of course, if I had understood you cared one way or the other—­”

Sofia heard no more:  unconsciously she had closed the door, at one and the same time shutting from her sight Victor’s exultant sneer and from her hearing the words with which the man whom she loved had damned himself irretrievably and dashed her spirit from radiant pinnacles of ecstasy into the profoundest black abyss of shame and despair.