IV
It was a quarter to eleven when Dane had finished writing. He was astonished when he saw how late it was. Valerie must have fallen asleep, he thought. He went quietly out through the dimly lit composing-room and saw from the doorway that she lay exactly as he had left her with his coat unmoved, showing that she had never stirred. He leaned down to look at her. Her face was not so livid now, and he was struck again with the distinction of it, and by an expression of sadness and disillusionment that was not there when her eyes were open and her features ablaze with the light from them. No, she was not the mere child he had thought her. He looked at her shapely, passionate mouth, contrasting with the intellectual forehead and the balance in the rest of her face. That mouth beguiled him, enticed him, overcame him. He told himself he was a fool to play with the temptation to kiss her, but he leaned lower and very delicately kissed the unconscious lips, thereby stirring in himself senses that after considerable starvation were only too ready to be stirred. He sat up a little ashamed of himself, but as she did not stir he leaned down recklessly and did it again. He took up her ropes of hair and laid them against his cheek enjoying the fragrance of them. He had always loved women’s hair when it was soft and fine like this. He was just thinking she was very sound asleep when a noise staggered him and brought him to his feet with a sickening sense of shock.
What he distinctly heard was the opening of the front door. In a flash it went through his mind that the office was lit, that it was a public place, and that anyone could come in as he himself had done. And he was here in the yard with Valerie unconscious and prostrate upon the
