She was
past caring what he thought.

"And when do you expect to meet again?" Mordaunt asked, with great
distinctness.

She flinched as if he had struck her. "Oh, haven't you tortured me
enough?" she said.

His jaw hardened. He stepped suddenly to her and took her by the
shoulders. His eyes appalled her. It was as if a devil looked out of
them. She shrank away from him in sheer physical terror.

"Oh, you needn't be afraid," he said. "I shan't hurt you. Why should I?
You are nothing to me. But--for the last time--let me hear you speak the
truth. You love this man?"

The words, curt and cold, might have fallen from the lips of a stranger,
so impersonal were they, so utterly devoid of any emotion.

Wide-eyed, she faced him, for she could not look away with his hands upon
her, compelling her.

"You love this man?" he repeated, his speech still cold but incisive--a
sharp weapon probing for the truth.

She caught her quivering nerves together, and valiantly answered him. "I
do!" she said. "I do!" And as she spoke, the power within her surged
upwards, defying constraint, dominating her with a mastery irresistible.
She suddenly stripped her heart bare of all reserve and showed him the
love that agonized there. "I have always loved him!" she said. "I shall
love him till I die!"

It was a woman's confession, in which triumph and anguish were strangely
mingled. In a calmer moment she would never have made it, but that moment
was supreme, and she had no choice. Regardless of all consequences, she
told the burning truth. She would have told it with his hands upon her
throat.

In the silence that followed the avowal she even waited for violence. But
she was unafraid. The greatness of the power that possessed her had
lifted her above all fear. She trod the heights where fear is not. And
all-unconsciously, in that moment she won a battle which she had deemed
irrevocably lost.

Mordaunt's hands fell from her, setting her free. "In Heaven's name," he
said, "why didn't you go with him?"

She did not understand his tone. It held neither anger nor contempt, and
so quiet was it that she could still have fancied it almost indifferent.
Yet, inexplicably, it cut her to the heart.

"I'll tell you the truth!" she said, a little wildly. "I--I would have
gone with him. I offered--I begged--to go. But he--he sent me back."

"Why?" Again that deadly quietness of utterance, as though, indeed, a
dead man spoke.

Her throat began to