Knowing Susie’s love for Arthur, she wondered whether her friend was not heartbroken as she compared her own plainness with the radiant beauty that was before her.  Arthur came in, and Margaret did not move.  He stopped at the door to look at her.  Their eyes met.  His heart beat quickly, and yet he was seized with awe.  His good fortune was too great to bear, when he thought that this priceless treasure was his.  He could have knelt down and worshipped as though a goddess of old Greece stood before him.  And to him also her eyes had changed.  They had acquired a burning passion which disturbed and yet enchanted him.  It seemed that the lovely girl was changed already into a lovely woman.  An enigmatic smile came to her lips.

‘Are you pleased?’ she asked.

Arthur came forward and Margaret put her hands on his shoulders.

‘You have scent on,’ he said.

He was surprised, for she had never used it before.  It was a faint, almost acrid perfume that he did not know.  It reminded him vaguely of those odours which he remembered in his childhood in the East.  It was remote and strange.  It gave Margaret a new and troubling charm.  There had ever been something cold in her statuesque beauty, but this touch somehow curiously emphasized her sex.  Arthur’s lips twitched, and his gaunt face grew pale with passion.  His emotion was so great that it was nearly pain.  He was puzzled, for her eyes expressed things that he had never seen in them before.

‘Why don’t you kiss me?’ she said.

She did not see Susie, but knew that a quick look of anguish crossed her face.  Margaret drew Arthur towards her.  His hands began to tremble.  He had never ventured to express the passion that consumed him, and when he kissed her it was with a restraint that was almost brotherly.  Now their lips met.  Forgetting that anyone else was in the room, he flung his arms around Margaret.  She had never kissed him in that way before, and the rapture was intolerable.  Her lips were like living fire.  He could not take his own away.  He forgot everything.  All his strength, all his self-control, deserted him.  It crossed his mind that at this moment he would willingly die.  But the delight of it was so great that he could scarcely withhold a cry of agony.  At length Susie’s voice reminded him of the world.

’You’d far better go out to dinner instead of behaving like a pair of complete idiots.’

She tried to make her tone as flippant as the words, but her voice was cut by a pang of agony.  With a little laugh, Margaret withdrew from Arthur’s embrace and lightly looked at her friend.  Susie’s brave smile died away as she caught this glance, for there was in it a malicious hatred that startled her.  It was so unexpected that she was terrified.  What had she done?  She was afraid, dreadfully afraid, that Margaret had guessed her secret.  Arthur stood as if his senses had left him, quivering still with the extremity of passion.