Well, if he treated it like that, he thought, he could reduce the danger to a minimum. He had allowed himself to be taken in; and the only thing now was to disentangle himself, slowly, gradually; and he would certainly succeed in this, for none of them, not even Pauline, had ever held him for long. Though she had got him to come and see her, though he had gone back once or twice, he had shown her that she had no sort of power over him and that he remained his own master. His voice roared hers down, so that he did not even hear the coaxing, brooding tones; his robust cynicism was more than a match for his sentimental tendencies; and so her only hold was on his recrudescent sensuality, glowing with the memories that had been smouldering in his blood. But that would run its course in time; and meanwhile, as he would never really recapture those old sensations after twelve years, the charm, the enchantment of it would wear off . . . and pretty quickly too. . . . Yes, she had grown old. She had not gone through her twelve years in Paris with impunity. All that former freshness, as of a fruit into which he used to bite, had vanished; he
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