She scarcely knew when the fearful tempest began to abate.  All sense of time and almost of place had left her.  She was dizzy, quivering, on fire, wholly incapable of coherent thought, when at last it came to her that the storm was arrested.

She heard a voice above her, a strangely broken voice.  “My God!” it said.  “What—­have I done?”

It sounded like the question of a man suddenly awaking from a wild dream.  She felt the arms that held her relax their grip.  She knew that he was looking at her with eyes that held once more the light of reason.  And, oddly, that fact affected her rather with dismay than relief.  Burning from head to foot, she turned her own away.

She felt his hand pass over her shamed and quivering face as though to assure himself that she was actually there in the flesh.  And then abruptly—­so abruptly that she tottered and almost fell—­he set her free.

He turned from her.  “God help me!  I am mad!” he said.

She stood with throbbing pulses, gasping for breath, feeling as one who had passed through raging fires into a desert of smouldering ashes.  She seemed to be seared from head to foot.  The fiery torment of his kisses had left her tingling in every nerve.

He moved away to the table on which he had flung his revolver, and stood there with his back to her.  He was swaying a little on his feet.

Without looking at her, he spoke, his voice shaky, wholly unfamiliar.  “You had better go.  I—­I am not safe.  This damned fever has got into my brain.”

She leaned against the door in silence.  Her physical strength was coming back to her, but yet she could not move, and she had no words to speak.  He seemed to have reft from her every faculty of thought and feeling save a burning sense of shame.  By his violence he had broken down all her defences.  She seemed to have lost both the power and the will to resist.  She remained speechless while the dreadful seconds crept away.

He turned round upon her at length suddenly, almost with a movement of exasperation.  And then something that he saw checked him.  He stood silent, as if not knowing how to proceed.

Across the room their eyes met and held for the passage of many throbbing seconds.  Then slowly a change came over Monck.  He turned back to the table and deliberately picked up the revolver that lay there.

She watched him fascinated.  Over his shoulder he spoke.  “You will think me mad.  Perhaps it is the most charitable conclusion you could come to.  But I fully realize that when a thing is beyond an apology, it is an insult to offer one.  The key of the door is under the pillow on the bed.  Perhaps you will not mind finding it for yourself.”

He sat down with the words in a heavy, dogged fashion, holding the revolver dangling between his knees.  There was grim despair in his attitude; his look was that of a man utterly spent.  It came to Stella at that moment that the command of the situation had devolved upon her, and with it a heavier responsibility than she had ever before been called upon to bear.