The wind was rising.  It roared in the trees and howled against the panes.  Sometimes a wild gust of rain lashed the windows.  It made her think of an unquiet spirit clamouring for admittance.

“Anne dear, play to me, play to me!” besought Mrs. Errol.  “If I listen I shall go mad!  No one will hear you.  We are right away from his part of the house.”

And though every nerve shrank at the bare suggestion, Anne rose without a single protest and went to the piano.  She sat down before it, and blindly, her eyes wide, fixed, unseeing, she began to play.

What she played she knew not.  Her fingers found notes, chords, melodies mechanically.

Once she paused, but, “Ah, go on, dear child!  Go on!” urged Mrs. Errol.  And she went on, feeling vaguely through the maze of suspense that surrounded them, longing inarticulately to cease all effort, but spurred onward because she knew she must not fail.

And gradually as she played there came to her a curious sense of duality, of something happening that had happened before, of a record repeating itself.  She turned her head, almost expecting to hear a voice speak softly behind her, almost expecting to hear a mocking echo of the words unspoken.  “Has the Queen no further use for her jester?” No further use!  No further use!  Oh, why was she tortured thus?  Why, when her whole soul yearned to forget, was she thus compelled to remember the man whose brutal passion and insatiable thirst for vengeance had caught and crushed her heart?

And still she played on as one beneath a spell, while the memory of him forced the gates of her consciousness and took arrogant possession.  She saw again the swarthy face with its fierce eyes, the haughty smile, which for her was ever tinged with tenderness.  Surely—­oh, surely he had loved her once!  She recalled his fiery love-making, and thrilled again to the eager insistence of his voice, the mastery of his touch.  And then she remembered what they said of him, that women were his slaves, his playthings, the toys he broke in wantonness and carelessly tossed aside.  She remembered how once in his actual presence she had overheard words that had made her shrink, a wonder as to who was his latest conquest, the cynical remark:  “Anyone for a change and no one for long is his motto.”  What was he doing now, she asked herself, and trembled.  He had gone without word or message of any sort.  Her last glimpse of him had been in that violet glare of lightning, inexpressibly terrible, with tigerish eyes that threatened her and snarling lips drawn back.  Thus—­thus had she seen him many a time since in the long night-watches when she had lain sleepless and restless, waiting for the dawn.

Some such vision came to her now, forcing itself upon her shrinking imagination.  Vividly there rose before her his harsh face alert, cruel, cynical, and the sinewy hands that gripped and crushed.  And suddenly a shuddering sense of nausea overcame her.  She left the piano as one seeking refuge from a horror unutterable.  Surely this man had never loved her—­was incapable of love!  And she had almost wished him back!