“Bah!” he says roughly, “don’t think all that goody-goody sentiment is a safeguard for errant fancies. Morality now-a-days is at a very low ebb, and marital obligations go a precious little way against inclination—certainly where men are concerned. On your honour, Zai, if Conway was free and could marry you, would you still have me?”
“On my honour I would have you and no one else—if I may?” she asks with a deprecatory smile.
Whereupon he catches her once more in his arms.
“Now,” he says, “while I hold you like this—heart to heart, hand in hand, and lip to lip—come, Zai! give me your lips—there!—I will put your love to a test! Zai, Zai!—for God’s sake—don’t you fail me now!”
“I shall never fail you,” she answers in a low voice.
“Not if I tell you that——”
He pauses. He really dreads to see her start and shrink away from him perhaps—he dreads to see the sweet lovelight in her grey eyes fade into coldness or hardness—he dreads to lose the delicious guerdon of these soft, delicious lips.
“Not if you tell me anything.”
“Zai, Conway is a free man. His marriage with Miss Meredyth is broken off entirely. Her people found out something about Flora Fitzallan, of the Bagatelle Theatre. I know for a fact that he will never be allowed to marry her. Well?”
“I think,” she says, and putting her arms around his neck she lifts up a pair of sweet, soft eyes, “I think that it is a very bad thing for Mr. Conway to have lost a rich wife, and that his misfortune is my gain, for now you will believe that——”