Part 18 (2/2)

”Me?” She gazed back at him astounded. ”But why--why? Does he want to get money out of me? Where has he gone?”

Monck laughed, a low, terrible laugh. ”Never mind where he has gone!

I've frightened him off, and I'll shoot him--I'll shoot him--if he comes back! You're mine now--not his. You were right to come to me, quite right. I was just coming to you. But this is better. No one can come between us now. I know how to protect my wife.”

He reached out his hands to her as he ended. His eyes shocked her inexpressibly. They held a glare that was inhuman, almost devilish.

She drew back from him in open horror. ”Captain Monck! I am not your wife! What can you be thinking of? You--you are not yourself.”

She turned with the words, seeking the door that led into the pa.s.sage.

He made no attempt to check her. Instinct told her, even before she laid her hand upon it, that it was locked.

She turned back, facing him with all her courage. ”Captain Monck, I command you to let me go!”

Clear and imperious her voice fell, but it had no more visible effect upon him than the drip of the rain outside. He came towards her swiftly, with the step of a conqueror, ignoring her words as though they had never been uttered.

”I know how to protect my wife,” he reiterated. ”I will shoot any man who tries to take you from me.”

He reached her with the words, and for the first time she flinched, so terrible was his look. She shrank away from him till she stood against the closed door. Through lips that felt stiff and cold she forced her protest.

”Indeed--indeed--you don't know what you are doing. Open the door and--let me--go!”

Her voice sounded futile even to herself. Before she ceased to speak, his arms were holding her, his lips, fiercely pa.s.sionate, were seeking hers.

She struggled to avoid them, but her strength was as a child's. He quelled her resistance with merciless force. He choked the cry she tried to utter with the fiery insistence of his kisses. He held her crushed against his heart, so overwhelming her with the volcanic fires of his pa.s.sion that in the end she lay in his hold helpless and gasping, too shattered to oppose him further.

She scarcely knew when the fearful tempest began to abate. All sense of time and almost of place had left her. She was dizzy, quivering, on fire, wholly incapable of coherent thought, when at last it came to her that the storm was arrested.

She heard a voice above her, a strangely broken voice. ”My G.o.d!” it said. ”What--have I done?”

It sounded like the question of a man suddenly awaking from a wild dream. She felt the arms that held her relax their grip. She knew that he was looking at her with eyes that held once more the light of reason.

And, oddly, that fact affected her rather with dismay than relief.

Burning from head to foot, she turned her own away.

She felt his hand pa.s.s over her shamed and quivering face as though to a.s.sure himself that she was actually there in the flesh. And then abruptly--so abruptly that she tottered and almost fell--he set her free.

He turned from her. ”G.o.d help me! I am mad!” he said.

She stood with throbbing pulses, gasping for breath, feeling as one who had pa.s.sed through raging fires into a desert of smouldering ashes. She seemed to be seared from head to foot. The fiery torment of his kisses had left her tingling in every nerve.

He moved away to the table on which he had flung his revolver, and stood there with his back to her. He was swaying a little on his feet.

Without looking at her, he spoke, his voice shaky, wholly unfamiliar.

”You had better go. I--I am not safe. This d.a.m.ned fever has got into my brain.”

She leaned against the door in silence. Her physical strength was coming back to her, but yet she could not move, and she had no words to speak.

He seemed to have reft from her every faculty of thought and feeling save a burning sense of shame. By his violence he had broken down all her defences. She seemed to have lost both the power and the will to resist. She remained speechless while the dreadful seconds crept away.

He turned round upon her at length suddenly, almost with a movement of exasperation. And then something that he saw checked him. He stood silent, as if not knowing how to proceed.

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