“No, but really I was thinking as I sat there to-night, how pretty they were, and how varied.  I can quite understand how a man would like to try them all.”

“You would object, I am afraid,” I said gravely.  “You object even to Veronica.”

“I know.  I don’t think it’s possible to do otherwise.  I shouldn’t love you if I didn’t.  But if you gave me up you could have all these others.”

“Well, you see, it is the other way; I have given them all up for you.”

“I know, but is it wise for your own happiness?  I thought about it a great deal to-night.”

“Women like that can give one only the simple pleasure of the senses.  It is very much the same with them all; but with you there is some extraordinary passion created in the brain as well as in the senses, that makes it a different thing.”

“I am so glad,” she murmured, leaning her arms on the table and looking at me with eyes absorbed and abstracted.

“There is no single thing in this world I would not do to give you pleasure, to delight and satisfy you.  I have never refused you anything, have I?”

“Never.”

And it was true.  She never had refused me anything it was in her power to give.  Still she held something that was not yet mine; the inner spirit of the Soul.

* * * * *

Days passed and things continued in the same way.  I had not the strength of mind to dismiss Veronica, to deprive myself of that subtle, delicious pleasure that lay in her soft kisses, in the bloom of her beauty, in her professed devotion to myself.  The Bacchante was not quite finished, so that gave me the outward excuse.  The excuse I put forward to myself was that Viola could not possibly know what I felt for the girl nor what I did, and so it could not hurt her.

Veronica made no secret of her wishes to tie me more closely to her still.  But, in spite of the clamour of the senses, there was something within me or round me that held me irresistibly from this.

All that I had done already I knew that Viola would forgive, even though it grieved and distressed her.  If I went further I did not know that she would ever forgive, and that made an insurmountable barrier that nothing Veronica could do or say could break down.

The weeks slipped by and brought us to the date when Viola’s operetta was to be produced.  On the evening which she had so looked forward to, now it had come, she seemed tired and spiritless, and we dressed for dinner almost in silence.  Captain Lawton and another man who had helped in the production of the piece were dining with us, and we were then going on to our box at the theatre.

At dinner Viola seemed to regain some of her old gay spirits, and the light rose colour I loved crept back into her cheeks as she laughed and talked with Lawton seated on her right hand.  I had always thought him a particularly handsome fellow, and to-night it struck me suddenly what an extremely attractive man he must be in a woman’s eyes.  He was dark and a little sunburnt from being in South Africa, and, combined with really beautiful features and a fine figure, he had that dashing grace of carriage, that unaffected simple manner of the soldier, which even by itself has a charm of its own.