it had never been,
I will respect your wishes, I will do my utmost to help you to forget.
But if you refuse--" He stopped.

"If I refuse--" she repeated faintly.

He made again that curious gesture that was almost one of helplessness.
"Don't ask for mercy!" he said.

In the silence that followed there came to her the certain knowledge that
he was suffering, that he was in an inferno of torment that goaded him
into fierce savagery against her, like a mad animal that will wreak its
madness first upon the being most beloved. It was out of his torment that
he did this thing. She saw him again agonizing in the flames.

If he had had patience then, that divine pity of hers might have come to
help them both; but he read into her silence the abhorrence which a
little earlier had possessed her soul; and the maddening pain of it drove
him beyond all bounds.

He seized her suddenly and savagely between his hands. "Are you any the
less my wife," he said, speaking between his teeth, "because you have
found out what manner of man I am?"

She resisted him, swiftly, instinctively, her hands against his breast,
pressing him back. "I may be your wife," she said gaspingly. "I am
not--your slave."

He laughed a fiendish laugh. Her resistance fired him. He caught her
fiercely to him. He covered her face, her throat, her arms, her hands,
with kisses that burned her through and through, seeming to sear her
very soul.

He crushed her in a grip that bruised her, that suffocated her. He
pressed his lips, hot with passion, to hers.

"And now!" he said. "And now!"

She lay in his arms spent and quivering and helpless. The cruel triumph
of his voice silenced all appeal.

He went on deeply, speaking with his lips so close that she felt his
breath scorch through her like the breath of a fiery furnace.

"You are bound to me for better--for worse, and nothing will ever set
you free. Do you understand? If you will not be my wife, you shall
be--my slave."

Quiveringly, through lips that would scarcely move she spoke at last. "I
shall never forgive you."

"I shall never ask your forgiveness," he said.

So the gates of hell closed upon Avery also. She went down into the
unknown depths. And in an agony of shame she learned the bitterest lesson
of her life.

CHAPTER VIII

A FRIEND IN NEED

"Why, Avery dear, is it you? Come in!" Mrs. Lorimer looked up with a
smile of eager welcome on her little pinched face and went forward alm