His eyes shocked her
inexpressibly. They held a glare that was inhuman, almost devilish.

She drew back from him in open horror. "Captain Monck! I am not your
wife! What can you be thinking of? You--you are not yourself."

She turned with the words, seeking the door that led into the passage.
He made no attempt to check her. Instinct told her, even before she laid
her hand upon it, that it was locked.

She turned back, facing him with all her courage. "Captain Monck, I
command you to let me go!"

Clear and imperious her voice fell, but it had no more visible effect
upon him than the drip of the rain outside. He came towards her swiftly,
with the step of a conqueror, ignoring her words as though they had
never been uttered.

"I know how to protect my wife," he reiterated. "I will shoot any man
who tries to take you from me."

He reached her with the words, and for the first time she flinched, so
terrible was his look. She shrank away from him till she stood against
the closed door. Through lips that felt stiff and cold she forced her
protest.

"Indeed--indeed--you don't know what you are doing. Open the door
and--let me--go!"

Her voice sounded futile even to herself. Before she ceased to speak,
his arms were holding her, his lips, fiercely passionate, were seeking
hers.

She struggled to avoid them, but her strength was as a child's. He
quelled her resistance with merciless force. He choked the cry she tried
to utter with the fiery insistence of his kisses. He held her crushed
against his heart, so overwhelming her with the volcanic fires of his
passion that in the end she lay in his hold helpless and gasping, too
shattered to oppose him further.

She scarcely knew when the fearful tempest began to abate. All sense of
time and almost of place had left her. She was dizzy, quivering, on
fire, wholly incapable of coherent thought, when at last it came to her
that the storm was arrested.

She heard a voice above her, a strangely broken voice. "My God!" it
said. "What--have I done?"

It sounded like the question of a man suddenly awaking from a wild
dream. She felt the arms that held her relax their grip. She knew that
he was looking at her with eyes that held once more the light of reason.
And, oddly, that fact affected her rather with dismay than relief.
Burning from head to foot, she turned her own away.

She felt his hand pass over her shamed and quivering face as though to
assure himself that she was a