better.  She was really pouring fuel on the flames.  She read him, up to a certain point—­as far as was necessary; and beneath his attempts at self-control she was conscious of a dynamic desire that betrayed itself in many acts and signs,—­as when he brushed against her; and occasionally when he gave evidence with his subordinates of a certain shortness of temper unusual with him she experienced a vaguely alarming but delicious thrill of power.  And this, of all men, was the great Mr. Ditmar!  Was she in love with him?  That question did not trouble her either.  She continued to experience in his presence waves of antagonism and attraction, revealing to her depths and possibilities of her nature that frightened while they fascinated.  It never occurred to her to desist.  That craving in her for high adventure was not to be denied.

On summer evenings it had been Ditmar’s habit when in Hampton to stroll about his lawn, from time to time changing the position of the sprinkler, smoking a cigar, and reflecting pleasantly upon his existence.  His house, as he gazed at it against the whitening sky, was an eminently satisfactory abode, his wife was dead, his children gave him no trouble; he felt a glow of paternal pride in his son as the boy raced up and down the sidewalk on a bicycle; George was manly, large and strong for his age, and had a domineering way with other boys that gave Ditmar secret pleasure.  Of Amy, who was showing a tendency to stoutness, and who had inherited her mother’s liking for candy and romances, Ditmar thought scarcely at all:  he would glance at her as she lounged, reading, in a chair on the porch, but she did not come within his range of problems.  He had, in short, everything to make a reasonable man content, a life nicely compounded of sustenance, pleasure, and business,—­business naturally being the greatest of these.  He was—­though he did not know it—­ethically and philosophically right in squaring his morals with his occupation, and his had been the good fortune to live in a world whose codes and conventions had been carefully adjusted to the pursuit of that particular brand of happiness he had made his own.  Why, then, in the name of that happiness, of the peace and sanity and pleasurable effort it had brought him, had he allowed and even encouraged the advent of a new element that threatened to destroy the equilibrium achieved? an element refusing to be classified under the head of property, since it involved something he desired and could not buy?  A woman who was not property, who resisted the attempt to be turned into property, was an anomaly in Ditmar’s universe.  He had not, of course, existed for more than forty years without having heard and read of and even encountered in an acquaintance or two the species of sex attraction sentimentally called love that sometimes made fools of men and played havoc with more important affairs, but in his experience it had never interfered with his sanity or his appetite