“You needn’t look as if I were urging you to it,” she laughed. “I’m sure I don’t want to lose you.”
“All right then,” said Baltazar. “Let us talk of something else.”
In these early months of struggle to enter his kingdom, Baltazar came nearer happiness than he had ever done before. A man younger, or more habitually dependent on women, would have counted the one thing wanting as the one prime essential and would have regarded everything else as naught. But Baltazar, although wistfully recognizing the one missing element, was far too full of the lust of others to sit down and make moan. Marcelle gave him all she could, a devoted friendship, a tender intimacy, a sympathetic understanding. He wanted infinitely more, his man’s nature clamoured for the whole of her. But what she gave was of en
