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As a matter of fact Merryon had not the smallest desire to go, but he would not say so; and all through the evening he sat and watched his young wife with a curious hunger at his heart. He hated to think that he had hurt her.

There was no sign of depression about Puck, however, and he alone noticed that she never once glanced in his direction. She kept everyone up to a pitch of frivolity that certainly none would have attained without her, and an odd feeling began to stir in Merryon, a sensation of jealousy such as he had never before experienced. They seemed to forget, all of them, that this flashing, brilliant creature was his.

She seemed to have forgotten it also. Or was it only that deep-seated, inimitable coquetry of hers that prompted her thus to ignore him?

He could not decide; but throughout the evening the determination grew in him to make this one point clear to her. Trifle as she might, she must be made to understand that she belonged to him, and him alone. Comrades they might be, but he held a vested right in her, whether he chose to assert it or not.

They returned at length to their little gimcrack bungalow–the Match-box, as Puck called it–on foot under a blaze of stars. The distance was not great, and Puck despised rickshaws.

She flitted by his side in her airy way, chatting inconsequently, not troubling about response, as elusive as a fairy and–the man felt it in the rising fever of his veins–as maddeningly attractive.

They reached the bungalow. She went up the steps to the rose-twined veranda as though she floated on wings of gossamer. “The roses are all asleep, Billikins,” she said. “They look like alabaster, don’t they?”

She caught a cluster to her and held it against her cheek for a moment.

Merryon was close behind her. She seemed to realize his nearness quite suddenly, for she let the flowers go abruptly and flitted on.

He followed her till, at the farther end of the veranda, she turned and faced him. “Good-night, Billikins,” she said, lightly.

“What about that dancing-lesson?” he said.

She threw up her arms above her head with a curious gesture. They gleamed transparently white in the starlight. Her eyes shone like fire-flies.

“I thought you preferred dancing by yourself,” she retorted.

“Why?” he said.

She laughed a soft, provocative laugh, and suddenly, without any warning, the cloak had fallen from her shoulders and she was dancing. There in the starlight, white-robed and wonderful, she danced as, it seemed to the man’s fascinated senses, no human had ever danced before. She was like a white flame–a darting, fiery essence, soundless, all-absorbing, all-entrancing.

He watched her with pent breath, bound by the magic of her, caught, as it were, into the innermost circle of her being, burning in answer to her fire, yet so curiously enthralled as to be scarcely aware of the ever-mounting, ever-spreading heat. She was like a mocking spirit, a will-o’-the-wisp, luring him, luring him–whither?

The dance quickened, became a passionate whirl, so that suddenly he seemed to see a bright-winged insect caught in an endless web and battling for freedom. He almost saw the silvery strands of that web floating like gossamer in the starlight.

And then, with well-nigh miraculous suddenness, the struggle was over and the insect had darted free. He saw her flash away, and found the veranda empty.

Her cloak lay at his feet. He stooped with an odd sense of giddiness and picked it up. A fragrance of roses came to him with the touch of it, and for an instant he caught it up to his face. The sweetness seemed to intoxicate him.

There came a light, inconsequent laugh; sharply he turned. She had opened the window of his smoking-den and was standing in the entrance with impudent merriment in her eyes. There was triumph also in her pose–a triumph that sent a swirl of hot passion through him. He flung aside the cloak and strode towards her.