of electricity. He drew her suddenly and
swiftly to him.

For a few throbbing seconds Stella was so utterly amazed that she made
no resistance. He astounded her at every turn, this man. And yet in some
strange and vital fashion her moods responded to his. He was not beyond
comprehension or even sympathy. But as she found his dark face close to
hers and felt his eyes scorch her like a flame, expediency rather than
dismay urged her to action. There was something so sublimely natural
about him at that moment that she could not feel afraid.

She drew back from him gasping. "Oh please--please!" she said. "Captain
Monck, let me go!"

He held her still, though he drew her no closer. "Must I?" he said. And
in a lower voice, "Have you forgotten how once in this very room you
told me--that I had come to you--too late? And--now!"

The last words seemed to vibrate through and through her. She quivered
from head to foot. She could not meet the passion in his eyes, but
desperately she strove to cope with it ere it mounted beyond her
control.

"Ah no, I haven't forgotten," she said. "But I was a good deal younger
then. I didn't know much of life. I have changed--I have changed
enormously."

"You have changed--in that respect?" he asked her, and she heard in his
voice that note of stubbornness which she had heard on that night that
seemed so long ago--the night before her marriage.

She freed one hand from his hold and set it pleadingly against his
breast. "That is a difficult question to answer," she said. "But do you
think a slave would willingly go back into servitude when once he has
felt the joy of freedom?"

"Is that what marriage means to you?" he said.

She bent her head. "Yes."

But still he did not let her go. "Stella," he said, "I haven't changed
since that night."

She trembled again, but she spoke no word, nor did she raise her eyes.

He went on slowly, quietly, almost on a note of fatalism. "It is beyond
the bounds of possibility that I should change. I loved you then, I love
you now. I shall go on loving you as long as I live. I never thought it
possible that you could care for me--until you told me so. But I shall
not ask you to marry me so long as the thought of marriage means slavery
to you. All I ask is that you will not hold yourself back from loving
me--that you will not be afraid to be true to your own heart. Is that
too much?"

His voice was steady again. She raised her eyes and met his look. The