r forsake
me.'

He laughed, as he kissed away her tears, and she tried to smile.

'Why can't we be married at once?' she asked. 'I don't want to wait any
longer. I shan't feel safe till I'm actually your wife.'

He reasoned with her very gently. After all, they were to be married in a
few weeks. They could not easily hasten matters, for their house was not
yet ready, and she needed time to get her clothes. The date had been
fixed by her. She listened sullenly to his words. Their wisdom was plain,
and she did not see how she could possibly insist. Even if she told him
all that had passed he would not believe her; he would think she was
suffering from some trick of her morbid fancy.

'If anything happens to me,' she answered, with the dark, anguished eyes
of a hunted beast, 'you will be to blame.'

'I promise you that nothing will happen.'

9

Margaret's night was disturbed, and next day she was unable to go about
her work with her usual tranquillity. She tried to reason herself into
a natural explanation of the events that had happened. The telegram
that Susie had received pointed to a definite scheme on Haddo's part,
and suggested that his sudden illness was but a device to get into the
studio. Once there, he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby
to exercise his hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the
creation of his own libidinous fancy. But though she sought to persuade
herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful
advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger. Her
contempt for him, her utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that
aroused in her horror and dismay. She could not get the man out of her
thoughts. All that he had said, all that she had seen, seemed, as though
it possessed a power of material growth, unaccountably to absorb her. It
was as if a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid long poisonous
tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body was enmeshed.
Work could not distract her, conversation, exercise, art, left her
listless; and between her and all the actions of life stood the
flamboyant, bulky form of Oliver Haddo. She was terrified of him now
as never before, but curiously had no longer the physical repulsion
which hitherto had mastered all other feelings. Although she repeated to
herself that she wanted never to see him again, Margaret could scarcely
resist an overwhelming desire to go to him. He