"Just that ... a chair ... sc.r.a.ped, you know, as if some one had brushed against it ... in a hurry."

Loring had his lip between his teeth. His eyes looked black as when he had been drinking heavily.

"You think ... it was ... Sophy?" he said at last.

"Yes," said Belinda.

"Great G.o.d!" groaned Loring.

Belinda's face changed. She took down her arms, and bent forward.

"Look here, Morry," said she in a low, concentrated voice. "_You've got to play square with me._"

Loring gave her a decidedly unloverlike glare.

"Oh, confound you, Linda," he growled, "don't turn heroics on me at this hour of the morning. I tell you we're in a h.e.l.l of a mess."

"_I'm_ not," said Belinda.

Loring couldn't help a grin.

"You're not, hey? Well, I like your colossal cheek," he said.

Belinda shot out her hand, and grasped him firmly by the arm with her white, soft fingers in which the little bones were strong as steel.

"You look at me, Morry," she commanded. "You look me right in the eyes."

He did so, unwillingly.

"Well?" he said.

"I want you to understand," said Belinda, "that when you took me in your arms yesterday and kissed me ... like that ... _you took me for good_."

"Oh, go to the devil, Linda! I tell you I'm not in the mood for high-mucky-muck talk."

"I don't care what mood you're in, and my talk's plain English," said Belinda. "You played with me two years ago, but you can't play with me now. I belong to the man who kissed me as you kissed me yesterday, and _that man belongs to me_."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, cut it out!" said Morris, with exasperation. "Who do you think you're talking to?..."

"The man that belongs to me," retorted Belinda fiercely, gritting her white teeth at him. "The man that belongs to me ... that has always belonged to me ... ever since that first time he kissed me ... two years ago--when I was only a child...."

"I don't believe you ever _were_ a child," put in Loring moodily. "I'll bet you cast some unholy spell in your cradle...."

"Well ... whatever I was or wasn't-- I'm a woman _now_," said Belinda.

"A woman who loves--who's been loved back--who'll die ... who'll _kill_ before she sees that love wrenched from her."

All blazing, she threw herself suddenly upon his breast. Her soft mouth offered itself--like a flower--fluttered its honeyed, crimson petals close to his. Tears of rage and love magnified her ardent eyes. The pulse of her reckless young breast against his was like the pulse of the sea against the rock. Loring was no rock. He hesitated--was lost--kissed her greedily. Grew mad with those intemperate kisses intemperately returned. Drank and drank of the honeyed, flower-scented mouth.

"We 'belong' ... oh, Morry! say we belong...." Belinda kept sobbing without tears, the quick dry sobs of pa.s.sion. "_I_ belong to _you_ body and soul ... _you_ belong to _me_ body and soul ... don't you? don't you ... body and soul?..."

"Well ... chiefly body," said Loring thickly, with that short, unpleasant laugh.

x.x.xIII

They were very quiet for some time after that storm of kisses had spent itself. Morris leaned back languidly in a smooth hollow of the rocks.

Belinda leaned against him. Her head was on his breast, her arm clinging close about him under his coat. The buckle of his waistcoat cut into her arm, but she loved the bite of the little piece of metal that was warm with his body. It amused and thrilled her both, to feel the everyday intimacy of his clothing in this sharp pressure of the buckle that nipped her soft forearm. And she loved the feeling of his strong, lean waist breathing in the living girdle of her arm. She lay in a daze of happiness, not thinking of the past or future, or even of the present clearly. She was _being_ fully--she had no need of thought.

Morris's voice roused her with a start.

"See here, Linda," he was saying. "This is all very fine-- I'd be an ungrateful beggar to complain if we'd only the present to consider. But we've jolly well got to consider a good deal else."

"Oh, it'll all come straight of itself, Morry," she murmured drowsily.

"_Don't_ bother ... not now at any rate...."

"'_Now_' is just what's got to be bothered about, you reckless witch....

We'll have the house about our ears if we go on like this...."

"I don't care _what_ comes about my ears.... Your heart's under my ear now--that's all I care about...."

"Linda! You really _are_ a reckless devilkin, aren't you?"

"Well ... isn't it nice to have me reckless about you?"

Loring gave his short laugh.

"Oh, it's 'nice' enough, I grant you. But nice things have a rather cussed way of ending nastily, my dear."

"_This_ won't----"

"Come, Linda. Show a little gumption. You say you think Sophy probably ... er ... was probably in the next room ... yesterday. Well, granting that, do you think things are going calmly on the way we like 'em?"

"Of course you'll have to have a plain talk with her," said Belinda, her voice taking a practical note.

Morris gave her a little shake as she lay within his arm. She laughed softly.

"My G.o.d! but you're a cool proposition," he said, half laughing, too, half exasperated again.

"I'm not cool to _you_," wooed Belinda.

"No, you're not," he answered shortly. "And that's just the devil of it for both of us!"

"Do you _want_ me to be cool?" teased Belinda.

"No, I don't. And that's the devil again."