"I know it, dear," he answered, caressing her face with his fingers. "If I don't happen to be enough for you, it is my fault—not yours."
"It isn't that!" she protested. But she could not explain what else it was that drew her to Cairy so strongly. "It mustn't make any difference between us. It won't, will it?"
Percy hesitated a moment, still caressing the lovely face.
"I don't think so, Con…. But you can't tell that now—do you think?"
"It mustn't!" she said decisively, as if the matter was wholly in her own hands. And leaning still closer towards him, she whispered: "You are wonderful to me. A man who can take things as you do is really—big!" She meant him to understand that she admired him more than ever, that in respect to character she recognized that he was larger and finer than the other man.
Percy kissed the cheek so close to his lips. Conny shrank back perceptibly.
Some elemental instinct of the female pushed its way through her
broad-minded modern philosophy and made her shudder at the double embrace.
She controlled herself at once and again bowed her beautiful head to his.
But Percy did not offer to kiss her.
"There are other things in life than passion," she remarked slowly.
Percy looking directly into her eyes observed dryly: "Oh, many more…. But passion plays the deuce with the rest sometimes!"
And he held open the door for his wife to leave the room.