"Now—to-night—far off—with me?"
"Yes! How has it happened?" she said breathlessly. "Why now? Why are you willing, all at once?"
"Because I no longer care for anything else but you!" he cried—"friends, career, reputation. Because I can't live without you, Dodo! Because nothing else in life is life but you! Because I've come to hate it all—the rest! Dodo, I love you! I can't be without you!"
"At last!" she said mechanically, staring at him.
She did not draw away, though his lips sought hers. She longed for that oblivion which had first come to her in his arms, that quieting of the senses that drew the day from before her eyes and closed her ears to all but the faintest, far-off murmurings. She did not resist, but eagerly awaited this masculine mastery that once had awakened all the slumbering passionate fires within her. She wanted to forget again, to be overwhelmed, balanced in his arms, a weak contented thing, leaping hungrily to his contact, delirious and on fire. But no such oblivion arrived. She felt herself poignantly awake, curiously, critically conscious of a hundred questions against her brain, wondering at him, at his frenzy—feeling none herself, nor knowing why.
All at once from the other room the voice of Snyder startled them, singing raucously:
"Who are you with to-night, to-night? Oh, who are you with to-night? Will you tell your wife in the morning Who you are with to-night?"
He straightened up suddenly, recollecting himself.
"Ah, no! Don't go!" she cried, as she had on that first night when they had been swept together. He seemed so strange to her now! She wanted to have time to know him, this new Massingale!