"You loving me?" she asked a little tremulously.

"You know I love you," he answered quietly.

"Very much?"

"Very much."

Her eyes flickered and her hands released their hold.

"Men not loving like women," she murmured at length wistfully.
And then suddenly, with her face hidden against him, she told
him--of the fulfilling of all her hope, the supreme desire of
eastern women, pouring out her happiness in quick passionate
sentences, her body shaking with emotion, her fingers gripping
his convulsively.

Craven sat aghast. It was a possibility of which he had always
been aware but which with other unpleasant contingencies he had
relegated to the background of his mind. He had put it from him
and had drifted, careless and indifferent. And now the shadowy
possibility had become a definite reality and he was faced with a
problem that horrified him. His cigarette, neglected, burnt down
until it reached his fingers and he flung it away with a sharp
exclamation. He did not speak and the girl lay motionless, chilled
with his silence, her happiness slowly dying within her, vaguely
conscious of a dim fear that terrified her. Was the link that she
had craved to bind them closer together to be useless after all?
Was this happiness that he had given her, the culminating joy of