"Get up ... get up, dear," she pleaded. "I do forgive you! Please, please get up!"
"Will you kiss me then?" came the muttering voice, muffled by her skirts.
"Yes. Yes, I will. Only get up—do, dear, do!"
He knelt up, and, flinging his arms around her, reached his mouth thirstily to hers. That kiss was a deathly draught to Sophy, but pity made her accept it without shrinking visibly. In her mind the thought went round and round: "Mystery—mystery. What was once like life to me is now like death—worse." Then: "I must be kind to him. If I am kind perhaps I can save him."
Chesney was fingering the folds of her gown shyly.
"I say—what a darling you look in this frock, Daphne," he said. "It clings so—shows your lovely Greek body so beautifully. What's it made of?"
"They call it Chudder Cloth," she said, smiling.
Chesney gasped, as if she had sprinkled water in his face, then, sinking back upon the floor at her feet, he went into fits of the most immoderate mirth. "Oh! Ah!" He could scarcely get his breath. "Forgive me, Sophy! But 'Chudder Cloth'—'Chudder'—I never heard anything so ludicrous in my life——"
And he rolled over on the floor, shaken from head to foot with preposterous laughter, beating the carpet with his hands.
Sophy was used to these outbursts caused by some especial, yet apparently trivial, word. Sometimes they took the form of mirth, as to-day, sometimes that of rage. She remembered what Olive had told her. Her heart felt very heavy.