May shrieked and threw her head back. “Harder,” she cried. “Faster, Eduard. Faster.” Eduard obligingly resumed the rapid pace.

“Yes, yes,” she kept repeating overcome with passion. Then she clasped Eduard’s head and guided his mouth to her breast, and when his lips clasped her nipple, she gurgled in lust. “Newland, take the other,” she said hoarsely. “I want it all . . . everything!”

Newland grasped the other breast and began to squeeze the hard tip. May moaned incessantly, obviously thrilled with being enveloped in the flesh of two lovers. And after she had had her fill, she announced that she was nearing her climax.

Her body tightened. The grind intensified and finally she cried out, urging the men to finish. Together, the three climaxed, and then collapsed in on themselves with satisfaction and utter fatigue.

After Eduard had been dismissed, May walked Newland to the door of the drawing room. “Now kiss me good-bye dear. I will see you this evening.” She offered him her cheek, which he kissed chastely. And as he took leave of her, she smiled wickedly at him as she twirled the package with the remaining sleeves.

The outer door closed on Newland Archer and he walked hastily away toward the telegraph office.

Chapter 10

“Ol-ol—howjer spell it, anyhow?” asked the tart young lady to whom Archer had pushed his wife’s telegram across the brass ledge of the Western Union office.

“Olenska—O-len-ska,” he repeated, drawing back the message in order to print out the foreign syllables above May’s rambling script.

“It’s an unlikely name for a New York telegraph office; at least in this quarter,” an unexpected voice observed; and turning around Archer saw Lawrence Lefferts at his elbow, pulling an imperturbable moustache and affecting not to glance at the message.

“Hallo, Newland: thought I’d catch you here. I’ve just heard of old Mrs. Mingott’s stroke; and as I was on my way to the house I saw you turning down this street and nipped after you. I suppose you’ve come from there?”

Archer nodded, and pushed his telegram under the lattice.

“Very bad, eh?” Lefferts continued. “Wiring to the family, I suppose. I gather it IS bad, if you’re including Countess Olenska.”

Archer’s lips stiffened; he felt a savage impulse to dash his fist into the long vain handsome face at his side.

“Why?” he questioned.

Lefferts, who was known to shrink from discussion, raised his eye-brows with an ironic grimace that warned the other of the watching damsel behind the lattice. Nothing could be worse “form” the look reminded Archer, than any display of temper in a public place.

Archer had never been more indifferent to the requirements of form; but his impulse to do Lawrence Lefferts a physical injury was only momentary. The idea of bandying Ellen Olenska’s name with him at such a time, and on whatsoever provocation, was unthinkable. He paid for his telegram, and the two young men went out together into the street. There Archer, having regained his self-control, went on: “Mrs. Mingott is much better: the doctor feels no anxiety whatever”; and Lefferts, with profuse expressions of relief, asked him if he had heard that there were beastly bad rumours again about Beaufort… .