Olga shivered suddenly and violently.  The horror of the tale had turned her cold from head to foot.  She no longer questioned the truth of it.  She knew beyond all doubting that it was true.

The sun still shone gloriously, and the yacht slipped on through the shining water, throwing up the sparkling foam as she went.  But to Olga the whole world had become a place of darkness and of the shadow of death.  Whichever way she turned, she was afraid.

“Oh, why have you told me?” she said at last.  “Why—­why have you told me?”

“Can’t you guess?” said Hunt-Goring.

“No!” Yet her breath came sharply with the word.  If she did not guess, she feared.

He looked down at her for the first time unsmiling.  “I have told you,” he said, “that I mean to marry you, and—­in keeping with the part of villain which you have assigned to me—­I don’t much care what I do to get you.”

She met his look with all her quivering courage.  “But what has this to do with that?” she said.

She saw his face harden, become cruel.  “Miss Campion is nothing to me,” he said brutally.  “Either you give me your most sacred promise to marry me before the end of the year, or—­I shall tell her the truth here and now, as I have just told it to you.”

She shrank as though he had struck her.  “Oh, you couldn’t!” she cried out wildly.  “You couldn’t!  No man could be such a fiend!”

He came a step nearer to her, and suddenly his eyes glowed with a fire that scorched her to the soul.  “You had better not tempt me!” he said.  “Or I may do that—­and more also!”

She put her hands up to shield her face from his look, but he caught them suddenly and savagely into his own, overbearing her resistance with indomitable mastery.

“Promise me!” he said.  “Promise me!”

His lips were horribly near her own.  She strained away from him tensely, with all her strength.  “I will not!” she panted.  “I will not!”

“You shall!” he declared furiously.  “Do you think I will be beaten by a child like you?  I tell you, you shall!”

But still desperately she struggled against him, repeating voicelessly, “I will not!  I will not!”

He gripped her fast, holding her face up mercilessly to his own.  “You think I won’t do it?” he said.

“I know you won’t!” she gasped back.  “You couldn’t!  No man—­no man could!”

“I swear to you that I will!” he said.

“No!” she breathed.  “No!  No!  No!”

She saw the fury on his face suddenly harden and turn cold.  Abruptly he set her free.

“Very well,” he said.  “Marry you I will.  But first I will show you that I am a man of my word.”

He swung round upon his heel to leave her.  But in that instant the warning voice cried out again in Olga’s soul, compelling her to swift action.  She sprang after him, caught his arm, clinging to it with all her failing strength.