But her dancing eyes betrayed her.
"Business," he said, sententious. His gesture indicated a vigilant universe of eavesdroppers. "Nobody's but our own!"
Nevertheless, there was none to spy upon them as he drew her gently by the waist, down the hall and into the back-parlour. She yielded with a charming diffidence.
In his embrace the sense of power slipped unheeded from her ken; returned the deep, obliterating rapture of over-night. Lips that first submitted, soon gave in return, then demanded....
She clung heavily to him, a little faint and breathless with a vague and sweet and nameless longing....
At breakfast in a neighbouring restaurant, Matthias disclosed his plans for the day, involving a motor trip down along the north shore of Long Island, dinner at Huntington, a return by moonlight. Joan, enchanted by the prospect—the sum of whose experience outside Manhattan Island was comprised in a few trips to Coney Island—consented with a strange mingling of eagerness and misgivings; the thought of the cost troubled a conscience still haunted by memories of last night's prodigality.
"I didn't know you had an automobile."
"I haven't; I'm chartering one for the day."
"But ... but ... won't it be awf'ly expensive?"
"Don't worry, dear."