ast defenseless.

"I--I will go back to the house," she said, and for the first time her
voice openly betrayed her broken self-confidence.

"_Can_ you go?" he challenged with a new and fiery assurance of tone.
"Don't you know that I can hold you here, without a word, without a
touch? Don't you realize that I can stretch out my arms and force you,
of your own accord, to come into them?"

She seemed striving to break some spell of lethargy, but she only
succeeded in swaying a little as she stood pallid and wraith-like in the
moonlight. Her lips moved, but she failed to speak.

"I will never leave you again." Farquaharson's voice leaped suddenly
with the elation of certain triumph. "Because you are mine and I am
yours. I said once with a boy's assurance that they might surround you
with regiments of soldiers but that I would come and claim you. Now I've
come. There is no more doubt. Husband or lover--you may decide--but you
are mine."

Her knees weakened and as she tried to retreat before his advance she
tottered, reaching out her hands with a groping uncertainty. It was then
that he caught her in his arms and crushed her close to him, conscious
of the wild flutter that went through her soft body; intoxicated by the
fragrant softness of the dark hair which he was kissing--and at first
oblivious to her struggle for freedom from his embrace.

"Stuart ... Stuart...!" she pleaded in the wildly agitated whisper of a
half-recovered voice. "Don't--for God's sake, don't!"

But as she turned up her face to make her final plea, he smothered the
words with his own lips upon hers.

For years she had dwelt for him on the most remote borderland of
unattainable dreams. Now her heart was throbbing against his own and he
knew exultantly that whatever her mind might say in protest, her heart
was at home there. In his brain pealed a crescendo of passion that
drowned out whispers of remonstrance as pounding surf drowns the cry of
a gull.

But at last her lips were free again and her panting protests came to
him, low but insistent. "Let me go--don't you see?... It's my last
chance.... The tide is taking me." Then feebly and in postscript, "I'll
call for help." But the man laughed. "Call, dearest," he dared her.
"Then I can break silence and be honest again. Do you think I'm not
willing to fight for you?"

The moment had come which she had faithfully and long sought to avoid:
the moment which nature must dominate. Even as she strugg