"Don't mind me. I'm a fool," he said shortly, looking away from her—"and a very—unhappy one—"
"Clive!"
He said savagely: "I tell you I don't know what's the matter with me—" He passed one hand brusquely across his eyes and stood so, scowling at the hearth where Hafiz sat, staring gravely back at him.
"Clive, are you ill?"
He shrugged away the suggestion, and his arm brushed against hers. The contact seemed to paralyse him; but when, slipping back unconsciously into the old informalities, she laid her hands on his shoulders and turned him toward the light, instantly and too late she was aware that the old and innocent intimacy was ended, done for,—a thing of the past.
Incredulous still in the very menace of new and perilous relations—of a new intimacy, imminent, threatening, she withdrew her hands from
the shoulders of this man who had been a boy but an instant ago. And the next moment he caught her in his arms.
"Clive! You can't do this!" she whispered, deathly white.
"What am I to do?" he retorted fiercely.
"Not this, Clive!—For my sake—please—please—"