endship you had given up all
thought of anything else. I thought you were to be trusted and I trusted
you. Oh, I admit I ought to have known you better. But I shall never
make that mistake again."

"No," Nap said. "I don't think you will."

He spoke deliberately; he almost drawled. Yet a sense of danger stabbed
her. His sudden coldness was more terrible than his heat.

"But why say this to me now?" he said. "Do you think it will make any
difference?"

He had not moved as he uttered the words, and yet she felt as if he
menaced her. He made her think of a crouching tiger--a tiger whose
devotion had turned to sudden animosity.

She did not shrink from him, but her heart quickened. "It must make a
difference," she said. "You have utterly misunderstood me, or you would
never have brought me here."

"Don't be too sure of that," he returned. "It may be that you can deceive
yourself more easily than you can deceive me. Or again, it may be that I
have come to the end of my patience and have decided to take by storm
what cannot be won by waiting."

She drew herself up proudly. "And you call that--love!" she said, with a
scorn that she had never before turned against him. "You dare to call
that--love!"

"Call it what you will!" he flashed back. "It is something that can crush
your cold virtue into atoms, something that can turn you from a marble
saint into a living woman of flesh and blood. For your sake I've
tried--I've agonised--to reach your level. And I've failed because I
can't breathe there. To-night you shall come down from your heights to
mine. You who have never lived yet shall know life--as I know
it--to-night!"

Fiercely he flung the words, and the breath of his passion was like a
fiery blast blown from the heart of a raging furnace. But still she did
not shrink before him. Proud and calm she waited, bearing herself with a
queenly courage that never faltered.

And it was as if she stood in a magic circle, for he raised no hand to
touch her. Without word or movement she kept him at bay. Erect,
unflinching, regal, she held her own.

He caught his breath as he faced her. The beast in him slunk back afraid,
but the devil urged him forward. He came close to her, peering into her
face, searching for that weak place in every woman's armour which the
devil generally knows how to find. But still he did not offer to touch
her. He had let her go out of his arms when he had believed her his own,
and now he could not