shield shutting them away, alone. He had been terribly conscious of her all the evening. He had been feeling the sweetness of the nearness of her for two hours and a half, in the darkened theater. And she, too, had been feeling the sweetness of the nearness of him! When the car had left the crowded thoroughfares, and was purring along the dark, shadowed parkway that led to the street where Sheilah lived, suddenly, impulsively, Roger reached out one hand, guiding the car with the other, and placed it palm upwards on Sheilah's knee. She glanced down at it an instant, and then as naturally as she would have returned his smile, placed her own in it. It was enough. He grasped that quick, spontaneous response of hers eagerly. And thus they sat till they reached Sheilah's door, something running between them, through their clasped hands, that robbed them of the power of speech, that likewise seemed to rob them of the power to loosen their grasp.
The lights in the hall of the apartment were always put out at eleven o'clock. It was wrapped in the pitch blackness of the third-floor hall, just outside the door of the muslin-curtained front room, that Roger touched again the edge of the wine-cup. And this time he drank!
He did not know at the time whether or not Sheilah drank too. It was later in his room, as he rehearsed the dizzy scene, and every detail of it—
