He broke off.  “You never heard of De Larade?  De Larade spent all of his short life looking for animate beauty, and worshiping it when he found it.  But he died leaning too far over a balcony to pick a flower for the Woman you’re staring at.”

“Why?” asked Vi again.  “You knew her, of course.  Tell me about her.”

“I’m going to,” said Leighton.  “The first time I saw her on the stage she seemed to me merely an extra-graceful and extra-sensuous Spanish dancer.  Nothing to rave over, nothing to stimulate a jaded palate.  I could have met her; I decided I didn’t want to.  Later on I did meet her, not in her dressing-room, but at a house where she was the last person I expected to see.”

Leighton picked up a cigarette, lighted it, and sat down.

“The place ought to have protected her,” he continued, “but when you’ve seen two thirds of a woman’s body, it takes a lot of atmosphere to make you forget it.  We were in a corner by ourselves.  I can’t remember just what I did.  Probably laid my hand on her arm with intent.  Well, Vi, she didn’t thrill the way your blood and mine has thrilled an occasion.  She just shrank.  Then she frowned, and the frown made her look really ugly.  ‘Don’t forget,’ she whispered to me, ’that I’m a married woman.  I never forget it—­not for one minute.’”

Leighton blew a cloud of smoke at the fire.  It twisted into wreaths and whirled up the chimney.

“Quite a facer, eh?” he went on.  “But it didn’t down me.  It only woke me up.  ’Have you ever had a man sit down with you beside him and hold you so,’ I asked her, ’with your back to his knees, your head in his hands and his eyes and his mouth close to yours—­a man that wasn’t trying to get to a single goal, but was content to linger with you in the land of dreams?’

“Believe me, Vi, the soul of a pure woman that every man thinks he has a right to make love to is the shyest of all souls.  Such a woman sheds innuendo and actions with the proverbial ease of a duck disposing of a shower.  But just words—­the right words—­will bring tears to her eyes.  Well, I’d stumbled on the right words.”

“‘No,’ she said, with a far-away look, ’I’ve never had a man hold me like that.  Why?’”

“‘Why?’ I said, ‘Because I will—­some day.’”

“‘You!’”

“I can’t give you all the derision she put into that ‘you!’ Then her face and her eyes went as hard as flint.  ‘Money?’ she asked, and I answered, ‘No; love.’”

Leighton looked at his cigarette end and flipped it into the fire.

“She laughed, of course, and when she laughed she became to me the most unattainable and consequently the most desirable of women.  I was at that age.

“Well, to cut the story short, I went mad over her, but it wasn’t the madness that loses its head.  It was just cunning—­the cunning with a touch of fanaticism that always reaches its goal.  I laid seige to her by day and by night, and at last, one day, she sent for me.  She was alone; I could see that she meant us to be alone.  She made me sit down.  She stood in front of me.  To my eyes she had become beautiful.  I wanted her, really wanted her.