“If you think they’re good here you ought to taste them on the Cape, right out of the water,” he declared, and went on to relate how he had once eaten a fabulous number in a contest with a friend of his, and won a bet.  He was fond of talking about wagers he had won.  Betting had lent a zest to his life.  “We’ll roll down there together some day next summer, little girl.  It’s a great place.  You can go in swimming three times a day and never feel it.  And talk about eating oysters, you can’t swallow ’em as fast as a fellow I know down there, Joe Pusey, can open ’em.  It’s some trick to open ’em.”

He described the process, but she—­scarcely listened.  She was striving to adjust herself to the elements of a new and revolutionary experience; to the waiters who came and went, softly, deferentially putting hot plates before her, helping her to strange and delicious things; a creamy soup, a fish with a yellow sauce whose ingredients were artfully disguised, a breast of guinea fowl, a salad, an ice, and a small cup of coffee.  Instincts and tastes hitherto unsuspected and ungratified were aroused in her.  What would it be like always to be daintily served, to eat one’s meals in this leisurely and luxurious manner?  As her physical hunger was satisfied by the dainty food, even as her starved senses drank in the caressing warmth and harmony of the room, the gleaming fire, the heavy scent of the flowers, the rose glow of the lights in contrast to the storm without,—­so the storm flinging itself against the windows, powerless to reach her, seemed to typify a former existence of cold, black mornings and factory bells and harsh sirens, of toil and limitations.  Had her existence been like that? or was it a dream, a nightmare from which she had awakened at last?  From time to time, deep within her, she felt persisting a conviction that that was reality, this illusion, but she fought it down.  She wanted—­oh, how she wanted to believe in the illusion!

Facing her was the agent, the genius, the Man who had snatched her from that existence, who had at his command these delights to bestow.  She loved him, she belonged to him, he was to be her husband—­yet there were moments when the glamour of this oddly tended to dissolve, when an objective vision intruded and she beheld herself, as though removed from the body, lunching with a strange man in a strange place.  And once it crossed her mind—­what would she think of another woman who did this?  What would she think if it were Lise?  She could not then achieve a sense of identity; it was as though she had partaken of some philtre lulling her, inhibiting her power to grasp the fact in its enormity.  And little by little grew on her the realization of what all along she had known, that the spell of these surroundings to which she had surrendered was an expression of the man himself.  He was the source of it.  More and more, as he talked, his eyes troubled and stirred her; the touch of his hand, as he reached across the table and laid it on hers, burned her.  When the waiters had left them alone she could stand the strain no longer, and she rose and strayed about the room, examining the furniture, the curtains, the crystal pendants, faintly pink, that softened and diffused the light; and she paused before the grand piano in the corner.