He flung his head back impatiently.  “If it is not that, what is it?” he demanded.  “A return of hide-bound scruples about the children?  You know that they must live their own lives, not yours, and that anything that gives you greater richness and power makes you a better mother.”

“Oh yes, I know that,” she answered.  “I have thought of that, myself.”

But he had a baffled feeling that this was not at all the admission the words would make it seem.

His impatience began to burn high, and a dawning alarm to translate itself into anger.  He would not be played with, by any woman who ever lived!  “Marise,” he said roughly, “what under the sun is it?” In his tone was all his contemptuous dismissal of it, whatever it might be . . . outworn moral qualms, fear of the world’s opinion, inertia, cowardice, hair-splitting scruples, or some morbid physical revulsion . . . there was not one of them which he knew he could not instantly pounce on and shake to rags.

Marise stood very still, her eyes bent downward.  “Aren’t you going to answer me?” he said, furious.

She nodded.  “Yes, I’m going to answer you,” she said, without raising her eyes.  He understood that he must wait, and stood opposite to her, close to her, looking at her, all the strength of his passion in that avid gaze.

She was stamped on his mind in every detail as she looked at that instant, infinitely desirable, infinitely alluring, in her thin white dress, her full supple woman’s body erect and firm with a strong life of its own, her long sensitive hands clasped before her . . . how many times in his dreams had he held them in his . . . her shining dark hair bound smoothly about her head and down low on each side of her rounded forehead.  Her thick white eyelids, down-dropped, were lowered over her eyes, and her mouth with its full lips and deep corners . . . at the sight of her mouth on which he had laid that burning kiss, Vincent felt a barrier within him give way . . . here he was at last with the woman he loved, the woman who was going to give herself to him . . .  Good God! all these words . . . what did they mean?  Nothing.  He swept her into his arms and drew her face to his, his eyes closed, lost in the wonder and ecstasy of having reached his goal at last.

* * * * *

She did not make the startled virginal resistance of a girl.  She drew away from him quietly . . . the hatred for that quiet was murderous in him . . . and shook her head.  Why, it was almost gently that she shook her head.

How dared she act gently to him, as though he were a boy who had made a mistake!  How dared she not be stirred and mastered!  He felt his head burning hot with anger, and knew that his face must be suffused with red.

And hers was not, it was quiet.  He could have stamped with rage, and shaken her.  He wanted to hurt her at once, deeply, to pierce her and sting her back to life.  “Do you mean,” he said brutally, “that you find, after all, that you are a cold, narrow, cowardly, provincial woman, stunted by your life, so that you are incapable of feeling a generous heat?”