“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he said presently, when she turned her face at last abashed into his shoulder.  “I may be giving more than you at this stage, but it won’t be so later.  You shall have the opportunity of paying me back in full.  How does that appeal to you, Daphne the demure?  Are you going to be a good little wife to me?”

“I’ll try,” she whispered.

“And give me all I ask—­always?”

“I’ll try,” she whispered again more faintly, conscious of that terrifying sense of being so merged into his overwhelming personality that the very breath she drew seemed not her own.

He lifted her into his arms, holding her hard pressed against the throbbing of his heart.  “You wisp of thistledown!” he said.  “You feather!  How have you managed to set me on fire like this?  I think of nothing but you—­the fairy wonder of you—­day and night.  If you were to slip out of my reach now, I believe I should follow and kill you.”

Dinah lay across his breast in palpitating submission to his will.  She could hear his heart beating like a rising tempest, and the force of his passion overcame her like a tornado.  His kisses were like the flames of a fiery furnace.  She felt stifled, shattered by his violence.  But in the room beyond she still heard that steady voice reading aloud, and it kept her from panic.  She knew that she had only to raise her own voice, and he would be with her,—­Greatheart of the golden armour, strong and fearless in her defence.

Sir Eustace heard that quiet voice also, as one hears the warning of conscience.  He slackened his hold upon her, with a quivering, half-shamed laugh.

“Only another fortnight,” he said, “and I shall have you to myself—­all day and all night too.”  He looked at her with sudden critical attention.  “You had better go to bed, child.  You look like a little tired ghost.”

She did not feel like a ghost, for she was burning from head to foot.  But as she slipped from his arms the ground seemed to be rocking all around her.  She stretched out her hands blindly, gasping, feeling for support.

He was up in a moment, holding her.  “What is it?  Aren’t you well?”

She sank against him for she could not stand.  He held her with a tenderness that was new to her.

“My darling, have I tired you out?  What a thoughtless brute I am!”

It was the first time she had ever heard a word of self-reproach upon his lips; the first time, though she knew it not, that actual love inspired him, entering as it were through that breach in the wall of overbearing pride that girt him round.

She leaned against him with more confidence than she had ever before known, dizzy still, and conscious of a rush of tears behind her closed lids.  For that sudden compunction of his hurt her oddly.  She did not know how to meet it.

He bent over her.  “Getting better, little sweetheart?  Oh, don’t cry!  What happened?  Did I hurt you—­frighten you?”