"I can't explain. But you are not yourself."
"Myself more than ever. My adoration for you is more uncontrolled—that is all."
She wrapped herself up in her furs, for it was silence that gave the best response. And then he said quite calmly:
"Will you go first. I'll switch off the light."
"Father will be waiting down stairs," she rejoined.
Then she went past him and out through the door, and he had to go back to the mantel-piece where one of the electric light switches was. He turned off the light; the room remained in darkness save where the dying embers of the fire threw a red glow on the sofa where she had sat with him, and the footstool on which her evening shoe had rested.
And the conventional man of the world, schooled from childhood onward to discipline and self-control, fell on both knees against that mute footstool, and leaning forward he pressed his burning lips against the silk cushions of the sofa, which still bore the impress and the fragrance of her exquisite shoulders.
Then he, too, went out of the room.