“It is I—­Pat,” he told her.  “Have you any objection?”

She gazed at him speechlessly as one in a dream.  He had followed her, then; he had followed her!  But wherefore?

She began to tremble in the grip of sudden, overmastering fear.  This was the last thing she had anticipated.  What could it mean?  Had she driven him demented?  Had he pursued her to wreak his vengeance upon her, perhaps to kill her?

Compelled by the pressure of his hand, she moved to the dark seat he had indicated, and sank down.

He stood beside her, looming large in the gloom.  A terrible silence fell between them.  Worn out by sleeplessness and bitter weeping, she cowered before him dumbly.  She had no pride left, no weapon of any sort wherewith to resist him.  She longed, yet dreaded unspeakably, to hear his voice.  He was watching her, she knew, though she did not dare to raise her head.

He spoke at last, quietly, without emotion, yet with that in his deliberate utterance that made her shrink and quiver in every nerve.

“Faith,” he said, “it’s been an amusing game entirely, but you haven’t beaten me yet.  I must trouble you to take up your cards again and play to a finish before we decide who scoops the pool.”

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

He did not answer her, and she thought there was something contemptuous in his silence.

She waited a little, summoning her strength, then, rising, with a desperate courage she faced him.

“I don’t understand you.  Tell me what you mean!”

He made a curious gesture as if he would push her from him.

“I am not good at explaining myself,” he said.  “But you will understand me better presently.”

And again inexplicably she shrank.  There was that about him which terrified her more than any uttered menace.

“What are you going to do?” she said nervously.  “Why—­why have you followed me?”

He answered her in a tone which she deemed scoffing.  It was too dark for her to see his face.

“You can hardly expect me to show my hand at this stage,” he said.  “You never showed me yours.”

It was true, and she found no word to say against it.  But none the less, she was horribly afraid.  She felt herself to be utterly at his mercy, and was instinctively aware that he was in no mood to spare her.

“I can’t go on playing, Pat,” she said, after a moment, her voice very low.  “I have no cards left to play.”

“In that case you are beaten,” he said, with that doggedness which she was beginning to know as a part of his fighting equipment.  “Do you own it?”

She hesitated.

“Do you own it?” he insisted sternly.

And, yielding to a sudden impulse that overwhelmed all reason, she threw herself unreservedly upon his mercy.

“Yes, I own it.”

He stood silent for several seconds after the admission, while she waited with a thumping heart.  At last, half-grudgingly it seemed to her, he spoke.