“Damn them!” he muttered to himself. “I was a fool to talk about it. But there it is! None of their chatter can make the sweetness of Gerda less entrancing.” But even as he formulated this revolt with a half-humorous irritation, he was aware that his mood had in some imperceptible way changed. Under cover of the friendly badinage that was going on between Darnley and Christie, he once or twice encountered the silent observation of the old bookseller, who had now lighted his pipe and was watching them all with a cloudy intentness; and it occurred to him that it was quite as much due to the shock of what he had heard about the old man that this change had come, as to anything that these two had said.

“But to the devil with them all!” he muttered to himself, as he and Darnley rose to go. “I’ve never seen anything as desirable as that girl’s body and I’m not going to be teased into giving it up.”