liberties with the sanctity of her bed. They all thought Claire was a
fool to let Peyton see Mina Raff like that in New York--the way to
avoid trouble was to make sure it couldn't begin. Has Peyton said
anything to you about Mina Raff? She is perfectly stunning, of course,
and an actress."

"Not to me," Lee told her; then he recalled the prolonged attention to
Mina Raff on the divan at the Club. "What if he is crazy about her?" he
observed indifferently; "it can't come to anything. It won't hurt
Claire if Peyton sits out a few dances with a public idol."

"I shouldn't think so either, but the others were so positive. I just
told them how happy we are together and how devoted you are--fifteen
marvelous years, Lee. It was plain that they envied us." She rose and
came close to him, her widely-opened candid blue eyes level with his
gaze. "Not the slightest atom must ever come between us," she said; "I
couldn't stand it, I've been spoiled. I won't have to, will I, Lee?
Lee, kiss me."

He met the clinging thin passionate purity of her mouth. "No, certainly
not, never," he muttered, extraordinarily stirred. He asserted to
himself that he would make no such fatal mistake. The other, the errant
fancy, was no more than a vagrant unimportant impulse. "Don't let these
women, who cat around, upset you; probably they are thinking not so
much about their husbands as they are of themselves. I've seen that
Alice Lucian parked out in a limousine during a dance, and she was
going right to it."

"It is foolish of me," Fanny agreed, "and not complimentary to our
love. I have kept you so long over nothing that you will be late for