He came to her, and every fibre of her being was aware of him and thrilled at his coming.  Never had she loved him as she loved him then, but her love was a fiery torment that burned and consumed her soul.  She seemed to feel it blistering, shrivelling, in the cruel heat.

Almost before she knew it, she had broken her silence, speaking as it were in spite of herself, scarcely knowing in her anguish what she said.

“Yes, I know.  I know what you are going to say.  You are going to tell me that I belong to you.  And of course it is true,—­I do.  But if I stay with you, I shall be—­a murderess.  Nothing will alter that.”

“Stella!” he said.

His voice was stern, so stern that she flinched.  He laid his hand upon her, and she shrank as she would have shrunk from a hot iron searing her flesh.  She had a wild thought that she would bear the brand of it for ever.

“Stella,” he said again, and in both tone and action there was compulsion.  “I have come to tell you that you are making a mistake.  I am innocent of this thing you suspect me of.”

She stood unresisting in his hold, but she was shaking all over.  The floor seemed to be rising and falling under her feet.  She knew that her lips moved several times before she could make them speak.

“But I don’t suspect,” she said.  “The others suspect.  I—­know.”

He received her words in silence.  She saw his face as through a shifting vapour, very pale, very determined, with eyes of terrible intensity dominating her own.

Half mechanically she repeated herself.  It was as if that devilish thrumming in her brain compelled her.  “The others suspect.  I—­know.”

“I see,” he said at last.  “And nothing I can say will make any difference?”

“Oh, no!” she made answer, and scarcely knew that she spoke, so cold and numb had she become.  “How could it—­now?”

He looked at her, and suddenly he saw that to which his own suffering had momentarily blinded him.  He saw her utter weakness.  With a swif passionate movement he caught her to him.  For a second or two he held her so, strained against his heart, then almost fiercely he turned her face up to his own and kissed the stiff white lips.

“Be it so then!” he said, and in his voice was a deep note as though he challenged all the powers of evil.  “You are mine—­and mine you will remain.”

She did not resist him though the touch of his lips was terrible to her.  Only as they left her own, she turned her face aside.  Very strangely that savage lapse of his had given her strength.

“Physically—­perhaps—­but only for a little while,” she said gaspingly.  “And in spirit, never—­never again!”

“What do you mean?” he said, his arms tightening about her.

She kept her face averted.  “I mean—­that some forms of torture are worse than death.  If it comes to that—­if you compel me—­I shall choose death.”