his great voice had done a moment before, his great strength,
too, seemed able to fill all space in its enveloping and undeniable
authority. Every time she tried instinctively to stiffen herself against
its might, it reacted, affirming its fierce will, its uplifting power.
Several times she lost the feeling of the ground and had a sensation of
helplessness without fear, of triumph without exultation. The inevitable
had come to pass. She had foreseen it--and all the time in that dark
place and against the red glow of camp fires within the stockade the
man in whose arms she struggled remained shadowy to her eyes--to her
half-closed eyes. She thought suddenly, "He will crush me to death
without knowing it."

He was like a blind force. She closed her eyes altogether. Her head fell
back a little. Not instinctively but with wilful resignation and as
it were from a sense of justice she abandoned herself to his arms. The
effect was as though she had suddenly stabbed him to the heart. He let
her go so suddenly and completely that she would have fallen down in
a heap if she had not managed to catch hold of his forearm. He seemed
prepared for it and for a moment all her weight hung on it without
moving its rigidity by a hair's breadth. Behind her Mrs. Travers heard
the heavy thud of blows on wood, the confused murmurs and movements of
men.

A voice said suddenly, "It's done," with such emphasis that though,
of course, she didn't understand the words it helped her to regain
possession of herself; and when Lingard asked her very little above a
whisper: "Why don't you say something?" she answered readily, "Let me
get my breath first."

Round them all sounds had ceased. The men had secured again the
opening through which those arms had snatched her into a moment of
self-forgetfulness which had left her out of breath but uncrushed. As
if something imperative had been satisfied she had a moment of inward
serenity, a period of peace without thought while, holding to that arm
that trembled no more than an arm of iron, she felt stealthily over the
ground for one of the sandals which she had lost. Oh, yes, there was no
doubt of it, she had been carried off the earth, without shame, without
regret. But she would not have let him know of that dropped sandal for
anything in the world. That lost sandal was as symbolic as a dropped
veil. But he did not know of it. He must never know. Where was that
thing? She felt sure that they had not moved