There was a touch of sensuality about her lips. The face was too broad
across the brow and cheekbones, but the eyes were magnificent--ice-grey,
sometimes almost green, always luminous, and set in with dark lashes.

There was something pathetic in George's gaze, as of a man forced to
look against his will.

It had been going on all that past summer, and still he did not know
where he stood. Sometimes she seemed fond of him, sometimes treated him
as though he had no chance. That which he had begun as a game was now
deadly earnest. And this in itself was tragic. That comfortable ease
of spirit which is the breath of life was taken away; he could think
of nothing but her. Was she one of those women who feed on men's
admiration, and give them no return? Was she only waiting to make her
conquest more secure? These riddles he asked of her face a hundred
times, lying awake in the dark. To George Pendyce, a man of the world,
unaccustomed to privation, whose simple creed was "Live and enjoy,"
there was something terrible about a longing which never left him for a
moment, which he could not help any more than he could help eating, the
end of which he could not see. He had known her when she lived at the
Firs, he had known her in the hunting-field, but his passion was only of
last summer's date. It had sprung suddenly out of a flirtation started
at a dance.

A man about town does not psychologise himself; he accepts his condition
with touching simplicity. He is hungry; he must be fed. He is thirsty;
he must drink. Why he is hungry, when he became hungry, these inquiries
are beside the mark. No ethical aspect of the matter troubled him; the
attainment of a married woman, not living with her husband, did not