Storri, who had met her kiss valorously, considered whether he might not please her by solicitude in a new direction.
"There is one thing, my San Reve," he observed, a show of feeling in his words.

"Why do you tie yourself to that draughting?
It grieves your Storri! Am I a pauper that my San Reve should work?
Is Storri so miserly that the idol of his heart must be a slave ?" The San Reve shook her head.
"I must have something to do," she explained, a half-smile parting her rose-red lips.

"I am like those poor rats of which my father told me who must gnaw and gnaw and forever gnaw to wear away their teeth, which otherwise would grow and kill them.

No, I like my work; let me alone with it." Storri tossed his hand and shrugged his shoulders in mute resignation and reproof.

His San Reve would work; he consented, while he deprecated her so mad resolve.
"Let us return to our first concern," said the San Reve.
Storri quaked; he could follow her trail of thought by mental smell as the hound follows the fox.
"Storri, tell me; do you love this Miss Harley ?" "My San Reve, how can you ask?
Look in the mirror! No, I do not love Miss Harley." The San Reve toyed with her cigarette.