He put out his hand and touched her arm lightly, persuasively.  “Then you are angry with me?” he said.

Her resentment melted.  She threw him a fleeting smile.  “No—­no!  But how could you imagine I could tell anyone?  You didn’t seriously—­you couldn’t!”

“There isn’t much to tell, is there?” he said, his fingers closing gently over the soft roundness of her arm.  “And you don’t like that plan of mine?”

“I didn’t say I didn’t like it,” said Dinah, her eyes lowered.  “But—­but—­I can’t do it, that’s all.  I’m going now.  Good-bye!”

She turned to go, but his fingers still held.  He drew a step nearer.

“Daphne, remember—­you are not to run away!”

A transient dimple showed at the corner of Dinah’s mouth.  “You must let me go then,” she said.

“And if I do—­how will you reward me?” His voice was very deep; the tones of it sent a sharp quiver through her.  She felt unspeakably small and helpless.

She made a little gesture of appeal.  “Please—­please let me go!  You know you are much stronger than I am.”

He drew nearer, his face bent so low that his lips touched her shoulder as she stood turned from him.  “You don’t know your strength yet,” he said.  “But you soon will.  Are you going away from me like this?  Don’t you think you’re rather hard on me?”

It was a point of view that had not occurred to Dinah.  Her warm heart had a sudden twinge of self-reproach.  She turned swiftly to him.

“I didn’t mean to be horrid.  Please don’t think that of me!  I know I often am.  But not to you—­never to you!”

“Never?” he said.

His face was close to her, and it wore a faint smile in which she detected none of the arrogance of the conqueror.  She put up a shy, impulsive hand and touched his cheek.

“Of course not—­Apollo!” she whispered.

He caught the hand and kissed it.  She trembled as she felt the drawing of his lips.

“I—­I must really go now,” she told him hastily.

He stood up to his full height, and again she quivered as she realized how magnificent a man he was.

“A bientot, Daphne!” he said, and let her go.

She slipped away from his presence with the feeling of being caught in the meshes of a great net from which she could never hope to escape.  She had drunk to-night yet deeper of the wine of the gods, and she knew beyond all doubting that she would return for more.

The memory of his kisses thrilled her all through the night.  When she dreamed she was back again in his arms.

CHAPTER XVII

THE UNKNOWN FORCE

“Arrah thin, Miss Isabel darlint, and can’t ye rest at all?”

Old Biddy stooped over her charge, her parchment face a mass of wrinkles.  Isabel was lying in bed, but raised upon one elbow in the attitude of one about to rise.  She looked at the old woman with a queer, ironical smile in her tragic eyes.