"Oh!" she cried out sharply, in a high voice. "Oh!" and she shrank from him as if he had hurt her by his touch. It was all she said, but the word quivered in his ears with a suppressed emotion. Was it thankfulness for her escape? he wondered, or was it anger at the part that he had played?
PART II
ILLUSION
CHAPTER I
OF PLEASURE AS THE CHIEF END OF MAN
On the morning after his meeting with Adams, Arnold Kemper awoke at three minutes of nine o'clock, and lay for exactly the three minutes that were needed to make up the hour watching the hand as it moved on the face of the bronze clock upon his mantel. The clock, like everything in his rooms, was costly, a little ornate, and suggestive of an owner whose intention aimed frankly at the original.
Lying in his large mahogany bedstead, with his body outstretched between soft yet crisply ironed linen sheets, and his head placed exactly in the centre of the pillows, he waited, yawning, until the expected hour should strike. If by an effort of will he could have put back the minute hand for another quarter of an hour he felt that it would have been pleasant to doze off again, shutting his eyes to the sunlight which streamed through the window on the Turkish rug, and inhaling agreeably the aroma of boiling coffee which reached him through the open door of his sitting-room. With the thought he closed his eyes, stretched himself again and clasped his hands sleepily above his head; then, without warning, the clock struck in a deep, bronze-like tone, and with a vigorous movement, he sprang out of bed, flung his dressing-gown across his shoulders, and passed quickly to the cold plunge in his dressing-room. When he reappeared there was a fresh, healthy glow in his face, and the smile with which he knotted his green figured necktie before the mirror, stuck his black pearl scarf pin carefully in place, and twisted the short ends of his brown moustache, was that of a man who begins his day in a blithe and friendly humour.
In the dining-room, which opened from his sitting-room next door, his breakfast was already awaiting him, and beside his plate he found several letters and the morning papers. He read the letters first, but with a single exception they proved to be bills, and after glancing at these with a suspicious frown he tossed them aside and turned to the little square white envelope, which contained an invitation to dine from a woman whom he detested because she bored him with domestic complaints. His heavy brows gathered darkly over his impatient gray eyes, and he pushed the mail carelessly away to make room for his coffee, to which his man was adding a precise amount of cream and sugar.