John laughed.

At the door of the cottage where she stayed, he hesitated.

He could see it was a rooming house in a private family's jurisdiction. She made no movement but fixed her enlarged, velvet-pupiled eyes on his and held them, as if to subdue the panic in them.

He said in a very low voice: "I wish I could stay with you." And then bent over to kiss her with a fraternal kiss, missing her mouth.

"You can if you wish."

"They will hear me."

"You know a great deal about war," said Sabina, "but I know a great deal about peace. There's a way you can come in and they will never hear you."

"Is that true?" But he was not reassured and she saw that he had merely shifted his mistrust of the critical family to mistrust of her knowledge of intrigue which made her a redoubtable opponent.

She was silent and made a gesture of abdication, starting to run towards the house. It was then he grasped her and kissed her almost desperately, digging his nervous, lithe fingers into her shoulders, into her hair, grasping her hair as if he were drowning, to hold her head against his as if she might escape his grasp.

"Let me come in with you."

"Then take off your shoes," she whispered.

He followed her.

"My room is on the first floor. Keep in step with me as we go up the stairs; they creak. But it will sound like one person." He smiled.

When they reached her room, and she closed the door, he examined his surroundings as if to assure himself he had not fallen into an enemy trap.

His caresses were so delicate that they were almost like a teasing, an evanescent challenge which she feared to respond to as it might vanish. His fingers teased her, and withdrew when they had aroused her, his mouth teased her and then eluded hers, his face and body came so near, espoused her every limb and then slid away into the darkness. He would seek every curve and nook he could exert the pressure of his warm slender body against and suddenly lie still, leaving her in suspense. When he took her mouth he moved away from her hands, when she answered the pressure of his thighs, he ceased to exert it. Nowhere would he allow a long enough fusion, but tasting every embrace, every area of her body and then deserting it, as if to ignite only and then elude the final welding. A teasing, warm, trembling, elusive short circuit of the senses as mobile and restless as he had been all day, and here at night, with the street lamp revealing their nudity but not his eyes, she was aroused to an almost unbearable expectation of pleasure. He had made of her body a bush of roses of Sharon, exfoliating pollen, each prepared for delight.

So long delayed, so long teased that when possession came it avenged the waiting by a long, prolonged, deep thrusting ecstasy.