and
to suffer; she had appealed to me and found me inflexible, relentless;
and now I had the fruits of my victory. The woman I loved, though she
might love me, feared me instinctively, as the once well-beaten dog
ever afterwards fears its master.

To me, who hated victory, who loathed subduing others, and the price
they bring of fear and shrinking, the realisation of her feeling
towards me was like a sudden physical pain. I got up from the table
feeling my face grow white with sharp distress. I hardly knew at the
moment how to express my thoughts; besides, I knew words would be of no
avail. An impression given is a scar upon the mind like a scar upon the
flesh. She fixed her eyes on my face with a sort of apprehension in
them, that was extremely bitter to me.

"What were you going to say, dearest?" I said, merely, with a faint
smile; "go on."

"Oh, nothing much!" she said, hastily, flushing and paling almost in
the same moment; "only I feel so restless. Come and show me all the
rest of the house, will you?"

I assented, and we passed out of the dining-room into the hall and up
the shallow flight of stairs. I put my right hand on the banister and
my left arm round her waist, and the whole sweet figure beside me, and
the white neck and ear so near me, drove out the thoughts of a minute
back, and I only laughed as I felt her waist contract convulsively as I
touched it.

"Would you like to take my arm better?" I said, mockingly, and drew her
round to me so that the soft face was just beneath my own. In the
subdued light of the staircase she lifted her lids, and I saw her eyes,
gleaming and sparkling, brimming over with gaiety and pleasure, and the
arm next me she raised and twisted close round my neck.

"No, Victor; here is the place for my arm now! You won't push it away
as you did in Paris, will you?"

The words hurt cruelly. Could I never obliterate that wretched memory?
It was vivid with her; it clung to me. It seemed a shadow dogging my
present pleasure. I stopped suddenly on the staircase and took her
wholly into my arms. All the supple form yielded at my touch, till it
leaned hard against my own; the face, pallid with excitement, was
raised to mine; the glitter of her eyes swam before my vision as I
caught it from beneath the half-drooped lids; the lips, parted in a
faint breath, then closed as mine joined them. As they touched, no
consciousness was left except that both our lives seemed mingling,
panting,