had cringed. She had called him John. She had surrendered.
"It was just a mean little fib," she whispered, and for a moment clung to him helplessly.
John, greatly surprised, was not too much surprised to feel the exultant surge of victory. For one moment he had lost control of himself, but in that moment he appeared to have gained control of Marien.
The strangest thing was that Miss Dounay seemed rather happy about it herself; and the wide range of the woman's capacity was revealed by her swift transition to a mood of purring contentment and a spirit of affectionate camaraderie that presently reached a surprising climax.
The act ended in the garden, with Isabel seated on a rustic bench, and Archibald bending over her. As the curtain descended, he was to stoop and print a kiss of tenderest respect upon her forehead. But now, as the curtain trembled, Miss Dounay lifted not her forehead but her lips, and held them, warm and clinging, to his for an instant that to Hampstead seemed a delicious, thrilling eternity, from which he emerged like a man newborn.
But the male instinct to gloat was the first clear thought.
"You do like me, don't you?" he breathed exultantly, while the curtain was down for an instant. Marien answered with her eyes and a quick affirmative nod, before the curtain bounded upward again for a last picture of husband and wife gazing into each other's eyes with a look expressing an infinitude of fondness. But John had ceased to be Archibald. What his look expressed was an infinitude of mystery and joy.
"And they say there is no satisfaction in a stage kiss!" he whispered to himself as he leaped up the stairs to his dressing room.
