The thunder roared again behind him as he entered, but neither of them heard it.  For he caught her in his arms with a hungry sound, and as she clung to him nearly fainting with relief, he kissed her, straining her to him gasping wild words of love.

The touch of those hot, devouring lips awoke her.  She had never felt the slightest fear of Guy before that moment, but the fierceness of his hold called a sharp warning in her soul.  There was about him an unrestraint, a lawlessness, that turned her relief into misgiving.  She put up a quick hand, checking him.

“Guy—­Guy, you are hurting me!”

He relaxed his hold then, looking at her, his head back, the old boyish triumph shining in his eyes.  “Little sweetheart, I’m sorry.  I couldn’t help it—­just for the moment.  The sight of you and the touch of you together just turned my head.  But it’s all right.  Don’t look so scared!  I wouldn’t harm a single hair of your precious little head.”  He gathered up the long plait of her hair and kissed it passionately.

She laid a trembling hand against his shoulder.  “Guy, please!  You mustn’t.  I had to let you in.  But not—­not for this.”

He uttered a low laugh that seemed to hold a note of triumph.  But he let her go.

“Of course you had to let me in!  Were you asleep?  Did I frighten you?”

“You startled me just at first.  I think the thunder had set me on edge, for I wasn’t asleep.  It’s such a—­savage sort of night, isn’t it?”

Sylvia glanced forth again over the low veldt where the flickering lightning leaped from cloud to cloud.

“Not so bad,” said Guy.  “It will serve our turn all right.  Do you know what I have come for?”

She looked back at him quickly.  There was no mistaking the exultation in his low voice.  It amazed her, and again she was stabbed by that sense of insecurity.

“I thought you had come to—­explain things,” she made answer.  “And to say—­good-bye.”

“To say—­what?” He took her by the shoulders; his dark eyes flashed a laughing challenge into hers.  “You’re not in earnest!” he said.

She backed away from him.  “But I am, Guy.  I am.”  Her voice sounded strained even to herself, for she was strangely discomfited by his attitude.  She had expected a broken man kneeling at her feet in an agony of contrition.  His overweening confidence confounded her.  “Have you no sense of right and wrong left?” she said.

He kept his hands upon her.  “None whatever,” he told her recklessly.  “The only thing in life that counts is you—­just you.  Because we love each other, the whole world is ours for the taking.  No, listen, darling!  I’m not talking rot.  Do you remember the last time we were together?  How I swore I would conquer—­for your sake?  Well,—­I’ve done it.  I have conquered.  Now that that devil Kieff is dead, there is no reason why I shouldn’t keep straight always.  And so I have come to you—­for my crown.”