He bent down and put his lips to hers.  With all his heart he tried to answer the passion in her kiss.  She pushed him away suddenly, and said faintly: 

“Thank you; you did try!”

Fort dashed his hand across his eyes.  The sight of her face just then moved him horribly.  What a brute he felt!  He took her limp hand, put it to his lips, and murmured: 

“I shall come in to-morrow.  We’ll go to the theatre, shall we?  Good night, Leila!”

But, in opening the door, he caught sight of her face, staring at him, evidently waiting for him to turn; the eyes had a frightened look.  They went suddenly soft, so soft as to give his heart a squeeze.

She lifted her hand, blew him a kiss, and he saw her smiling.  Without knowing what his own lips answered, he went out.  He could not make up his mind to go away, but, crossing to the railings, stood leaning against them, looking up at her windows.  She had been very good to him.  He felt like a man who has won at cards, and sneaked away without giving the loser his revenge.  If only she hadn’t loved him; and it had been a soulless companionship, a quite sordid business.  Anything rather than this!  English to the backbone, he could not divest himself of a sense of guilt.  To see no way of making up to her, of straightening it out, made him feel intensely mean.  ‘Shall I go up again?’ he thought.  The window-curtain moved.  Then the shreds of light up there vanished.  ’She’s gone to bed,’ he thought.  ’I should only upset her worse.  Where is Noel, now, I wonder?  I shall never see her again, I suppose.  Altogether a bad business.  My God, yes!  A bad-bad business!’

And, painfully, for his leg was hurting him, he walked away.

Leila was only too well aware of a truth that feelings are no less real, poignant, and important to those outside morality’s ring fence than to those within.  Her feelings were, indeed, probably even more real and poignant, just as a wild fruit’s flavour is sharper than that of the tame product.  Opinion—­she knew—­would say, that having wilfully chosen a position outside morality she had not half the case for brokenheartedness she would have had if Fort had been her husband:  Opinion—­she knew—­would say she had no claim on him, and the sooner an illegal tie was broken, the better!  But she felt fully as wretched as if she had been married.  She had not wanted to be outside morality; never in her life wanted to be that.  She was like those who by confession shed their sins and start again with a clear conscience.  She never meant to sin, only to love, and when she was in love, nothing else mattered for the moment.  But, though a gambler, she had always so far paid up.  Only, this time the stakes were the heaviest a woman can put down.  It was her last throw; and she knew it.  So long as a woman believed in her attraction, there was hope, even when the curtain fell on a love-affair!