moment it seemed that he would prolong the interview. He stood
above her, motionless, arrogant, frowning downwards as though he had
something more to say. Then, while she waited tensely, dreading the very
sound of his voice, his attitude suddenly underwent a change. The thin
lips tightened sharply. He turned away.

VII

After he was gone, Stephanie sat up and gazed for a long, long time at
the scud of water leaping past the porthole.

She felt stunned by the events of the past twenty-four hours. She could
only review them with a numbed amazement. The long suspense had ended so
suddenly and so terribly. She could hardly begin to realise that it was
indeed over, that the storm she had foreseen for so long had burst at
last, sweeping away the Governor in headlong overthrow, and leaving her
bruised and battered indeed, but still alive. She had never thought to
survive him. She had not loved him, but her lot had been so inextricably
bound up with his, that she had never seriously contemplated the
possibility of life without him. What would happen to her? she asked
herself. How would it end?

There was no denying the fact that, however inexplicable Pierre's
treatment might be, she was completely and irretrievably his prisoner.

There was no one to deliver her from him; no one to know or care what
became of her. Her importance had crumbled to nothing so far as the
world was concerned. She had simply ceased to count. What did he mean to
do with her? Why had he refused to discuss the future?

Gradually, with a certain reluctance, her thoughts came down to her
recent interview with him, and again the feeling that he had been trying
to convey something that she had failed to grasp possessed her. Why had
he warned her against attempting to define her position? What had those
last words of his meant?

One thing at least was certain. Though he had done little to reassure
her, she must make a determined effort to overcome her fear of the man.
She must not again shrink openly in his presence. She must feign
confidence, though she felt it not. Something that he had said a week
before on the occasion of his extraordinary proposal of marriage
recurred to her at this point with curious force.

"It is all a question of trust," he had said, and she recalled the
faint, derisive smile with which he had spoken. "Whatever you expect,
that you will receive." The words dwelt in her memory with a strange
persistence. She had a feel