She swayed towards him, and he caught her close; her face was against his, and she sought his lips. No word, no whisper even came from her: dumbly she clung to him, and, exultant, he betrayed her with a kiss. The best and the worst of her, love, trust, and all that was merely sensual as well, were his.
For one second he wavered, and reconsidered. Partly it was the mere beauty and physical intensity of her that gave him pause, partly also something akin to what he had felt when he saw Dennis staggering on the terrace at Stanier. Then back, stronger than ever from the gathered force of that check, came his hatred of love.
“We must go in,” he said.... “Pamela, you adorable thing. Your pity first, and then your love.”
They paused at the head of the stairs. Not a word had passed since they left the table.
“But your maid next door ...?” he queried, and her smile told him she understood.
Colin went softly into his room. There was Nino’s bed along the wall, and Nino there already, awake and silent, and eager for any adventure of Colin’s contriving. He tore off his clothes, and, as he undressed, once or twice his eyes caught Nino’s, and he had to check himself from laughing aloud. He slid into bed, and clicked off the light.
There was no long waiting: there came a faint rattle from the door into Pamela’s room, but in the darkness nothing was visible there, and Colin heard the door close again, and the key turned. He could just hear her feet on the bare tiles of the floor, and then from close at hand a little bubbling laugh and his name softly called. The sheer happiness of love sounded in that whisper: it might have been Violet’s voice speaking to him on one of the nights of their honeymoon here, and he hated the inimitable thrill of it....
He reached his hand to the switches and turned them both on.
She was standing in the middle of the room just under the light from the ceiling. In that strong illumination the thin silk nightdress, which was all that covered her, was transparent as a veil of sun-pierced mist; her figure crowned by that bright flame of her face was clearly visible, and her apparelled magnificence was pale beside this luminous revealed perfection. Colin almost regretted that he had prepared this hellish surprise for her to-night. To-morrow would have done as well ... and yet, what thrill of physical love could rival this gorgeous humiliation? How superbly moral it was! The woman had tempted him, coming to him at solitary midnight in the blaze of her beauty, and for once the man, master of his soul, derided her seduction. But the infamy of the brothels of Sodom was nearer salvation than his chastity.
She heard a stir behind her and half-turned. There was Nino sitting upright in bed. Simultaneously Colin spoke.