An adorable softness came into her eyes, and her hand instinctively closed round mine in its boneless clasp.  The long pent-up longing of the woman vibrated from her in waves that shook me to my soul.  My senses swam.  Her face quivered glorious before me in a black world.  Her lips were parted.  Careless of all the eyes in all the houses in the Avenue Road, St. John’s Wood, and in the head of a telegraph boy whom I only noticed afterwards, I kissed her on the lips.

All the fulness and strength of life danced through my veins.

“I told you I was quite alive!” I said with idiotic exultation.

She closed her eyes and leaned back.  “Why did you do that?” she murmured.

“Because I love you,” said I.  “It has come at last.”

Where we drove I have no recollection.  Presumably an impression of green rolling plain with soft uplands in the distance signified that we passed along Hampstead Heath; the side thoroughfare with villa residences on either side may have been Kilburn High Road; the flourishing, busy, noisy suburb may have been Kilburn:  the street leading thence to the Marble Arch may have been Maida Vale.  To me they were paths in Dreamland.  We spoke but little and what we did say was in the simple, commonplace language which all men use in the big crises of life.

There was no doubt now of my choice.  I loved her.  Love had come to me at last.  That was all I knew at that hour and all I cared to know.

Lola was the first to awake from Dreamland.  She shivered.  I asked whether she felt cold.

“No.  I can’t believe that you love me.  I can’t.  I can’t.”

I smiled in a masterful way.  “I can soon show you that I do.”

She shook her head.  “I’m afraid, Simon, I’m afraid.”

“What of?”

“Myself.”

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you.  I can’t explain.  I don’t know how to.  I’ve been wrong—­horribly wrong.  I’m ashamed.”

She gripped her hands together and looked down at them.  I bent forward so as to see her face, which was full of pain.

“But, dearest of all women,” I cried, “what in the world have you to be ashamed of?”

She paused, moistened her lips with her tongue, and then broke out: 

“I’ll tell you.  A decent lady like your Eleanor Faversham wouldn’t tell.  But I can’t keep these things in.  Didn’t you begin by saying I was a seductress?  No, no, let me talk.  Didn’t you say I could make a man do what I wanted?  Well, I wanted you to kiss me.  And now you’ve done it, you think you love me; but you don’t, you can’t.”

“You’re talking the wickedest nonsense that ever proceeded out of the lips of a loving woman,” I said aghast.  “I repeat in the most solemn way that I love you with all my heart.”

“In common decency you couldn’t say otherwise.”

Again I saw the futility of disputation.  I put my hand on hers.

“Time will show, dear.  At any rate, we have had our hour of fairyland.”