"Yes!"
"Get out, you old Roundhead!" said Quarren, laughing. He rose, laid his hand lightly on Westguard's shoulder in passing, and went upstairs to his room, where he wrote a long letter to Strelsa; and then destroyed it. Then he lay down, covering his boyish head with his arms.
When Lacy came in he saw him lying on the bed, and thought he was asleep.
CHAPTER V
Toward the end of March Strelsa, with the Wycherlys, returned to New York, dead tired. She had been flattered, run after, courted from Palm Beach to Havana; the perpetual social activity, the unbroken fever of change and excitement had already made firmer the soft lineaments of the girl's features, had slightly altered the expression of the mouth.
By daylight the fatigues of pleasure were faintly visible—that unmistakable imprint which may perhaps leave the eyes clear and calm, but which edges the hardened contour of the cheek under them with deeper violet shadow.
Not that hers was as yet the battered beauty of exhaustion; she had merely lived every minute to the full all winter long, and had overtaxed her capacity; and the fire had consumed something of her freshness.
Not yet inured, not yet crystallised to that experienced hardness which withstands the fierce flame of living too fast in a world where every minute is demanded and where sleep becomes a forgotten art, the girl was completely tired out, and while she herself did not realise it, her features showed it.
But nervous exhaustion alone could not account for the subtle change in her expression. Eyes and lips were still sweet, even in repose, but there was now a jaded charm about them—something unspoiled had disappeared from them—something of that fearlessness which vanishes after too close and too constant contact with the world of men.