And yet this girl—for she was still a girl—affected him profoundly. She plucked at some chord in him that was deeper and richer than desire, though it contained desire. When he had suddenly come upon her again, he felt, as he had in those brief September hours, that they belonged to each other.

He had not thought about her often in the years since their single meeting. He had had no time, nor was he a man to sentimentalize over a girl who had dismissed him. Still, he had heard her mentioned now and then over the teacups and wine bowls to which his present situation as Jefferson's secretary often condemned him, and of late the mention of her name no longer brought a pang. He had been indifferent to it.

And yet the sight of her small graceful figure in the daisy field had aroused in him a troubling emotion. It was not her beauty or fragile femininity. The few women who had attracted him during his rigorous career had been tall, resplendent goddesses, forthright and frankly primitive—women of the unsettled country accustomed to hard work, quickly responsive and unshocked by man's need for mating.

Theodosia had none of these qualities, and yet he wanted her. The realization angered him. This was no time to allow himself to be upset by a woman, when at last his confined and uncongenial life in the President's mansion was nearing its end, and when he was about to embark on the dangerous enterprise for the accomplishment of which he would need the full exercise of his mental and physical qualities.

Even now, there was a pressure of work awaiting him. The President would have had breakfast and be getting impatient, yet he lounged here beside her like a gawking schoolboy, unable to leave her.

'Tell me of your life,' he said abruptly. 'Are you happily married?'

She flushed. 'Of course.'

He watched the slow color flood her neck. She averted her candid eyes from his gaze, but not before he had seen the flicker of uncertainty in their dark depths.

'I don't think you are,' he remarked calmly. 'I don't believe you know anything about true mating.'

'Your speech is offensive, Captain Lewis, and ridiculous. You forget that I have a child.'

He gave a short, hard laugh. 'Any fifty-cent doxy can have a child. Do you give yourself to your husband with rapture? Do you belong to him body and heart and mind?—Have you ever felt about him as we felt about each other that evening in New York?'

He snapped his lips closed, turned impatiently from her. What insensate impulse was driving him to these foolhardy probings? She was right, there had been and there could be nothing between them. Why, then, this desire to cut and thrust into the shimmering smooth bubble that imprisoned her. He must leave her alone. But he could not.