Arthur had an idea that women were often afflicted with what he described by the old-fashioned name of vapours, and was not disposed to pay much attention to this vehement distress.  He soothed her as he would have done a child.

’Oh, take care of me, Arthur.  I’m so afraid that some dreadful thing will happen to me.  I want all your strength.  Promise that you’ll never forsake me.’

He laughed, as he kissed away her tears, and she tried to smile.

‘Why can’t we be married at once?’ she asked.  ’I don’t want to wait any longer.  I shan’t feel safe till I’m actually your wife.’

He reasoned with her very gently.  After all, they were to be married in a few weeks.  They could not easily hasten matters, for their house was not yet ready, and she needed time to get her clothes.  The date had been fixed by her.  She listened sullenly to his words.  Their wisdom was plain, and she did not see how she could possibly insist.  Even if she told him all that had passed he would not believe her; he would think she was suffering from some trick of her morbid fancy.

‘If anything happens to me,’ she answered, with the dark, anguished eyes of a hunted beast, ‘you will be to blame.’

‘I promise you that nothing will happen.’

9

Margaret’s night was disturbed, and next day she was unable to go about her work with her usual tranquillity.  She tried to reason herself into a natural explanation of the events that had happened.  The telegram that Susie had received pointed to a definite scheme on Haddo’s part, and suggested that his sudden illness was but a device to get into the studio.  Once there, he had used her natural sympathy as a means whereby to exercise his hypnotic power, and all she had seen was merely the creation of his own libidinous fancy.  But though she sought to persuade herself that, in playing a vile trick on her, he had taken a shameful advantage of her pity, she could not look upon him with anger.  Her contempt for him, her utter loathing, were alloyed with a feeling that aroused in her horror and dismay.  She could not get the man out of her thoughts.  All that he had said, all that she had seen, seemed, as though it possessed a power of material growth, unaccountably to absorb her.  It was as if a rank weed were planted in her heart and slid long poisonous tentacles down every artery, so that each part of her body was enmeshed.  Work could not distract her, conversation, exercise, art, left her listless; and between her and all the actions of life stood the flamboyant, bulky form of Oliver Haddo.  She was terrified of him now as never before, but curiously had no longer the physical repulsion which hitherto had mastered all other feelings.  Although she repeated to herself that she wanted never to see him again, Margaret could scarcely resist an overwhelming desire to go to him.  Her will had been taken from her, and she was an automaton.  She struggled, like a bird