He put her furs about her neck, then his hand rested on her shoulder. Her head fell back.
"Once more"—she said. He kissed her throat, then her eyes, then their lips met.
"Stay," he whispered, "stay"—Very slowly she drew away from him, smiled at him once, and was gone.
CHAPTER VIII
CHRISTOPHER'S DAY
"I judge more than I used to—but it seems to me that I have earned the right. One can't judge till one is forty; before that we are too eager, too hard, too cruel, and in addition too ignorant."
Henry James.
I
The War had the City in its grip. There was now, during these early weeks of November, no other thought, no other anxiety, no other interest. The shock of its reality came most severely upon those whose lives had been most unreal. Here, in the midst of their dining and their dancing, was the sure fact that many whom they knew and with whom they had been in the habit of playing might now, at any moment, find death—