le of harbouring for any
one outside himself. He looked upon her as his own, and he was defending
this idea of possession with the same pugnacity that he would protect
his dollars from a thief. Morrison had been forced to the conclusion
that Elise was lost to him. Hitherto Firmstone had been an impersonal
obstacle in his path. Now--The eyes narrowed to a slit, the venomous
lips were compressed. Morrison was a beast. Only the vengeance of a
beast could wipe out the disgrace that had been forced upon him.

In reality Elise was only a child. Unpropitious and uncongenial as had
been her surroundings to her finer nature, these had only retarded
development; they had not killed the germ. Her untrammelled life had
been natural, but hardly neutral. To put conditions in a word, her
undirected life had stored up an abundant supply of nourishing food that
would thrust into vigorous life the dormant germ of noble womanhood when
the proper time should come. There had been no hot-house forcing, but
the natural growth of the healthy, hardy plant which would battle
successfully the storms that were bound to come.

In the cramped and sordid lives which had surrounded her there was much
to repel and little to attract. The parental love of Pierre was strong
and fierce, but it was animal, it was satiating, selfish, and
undemonstrative. Hence Elise was almost wholly unconscious of its
existence. As for Madame, hers was a love unselfish; but dominated and
overshadowed, in terror of her husband, she stood in but little less awe
of Elise. These two, the one selfish, with strength of mind sufficient
to bend others to his purposes, the other unselfish, but with every
spontaneous emotion repressed by stronger personalities, exerted an
unconscious but corresponding influence upon their equally unconscious
ward. These manifestations were animal, and in Elise they met with an
animal response. She felt the domineering strength of Pierre, but
without awe she defied it. She felt the unselfish and timorous love of
Madame. She trampled it beneath her childish feet, or yielded to a storm
of repentant emotion that overwhelmed and bewildered its timid
recipient. She was surrounded and imbued with emotions, unguided,
unanalysed, misunderstood, that rose supreme, or were blotted out as the
strength of the individual was equal to or inferior to its opposition.
They were animal emotions that one moment would lick and caress and
fight to the death, the next in