loved him as she loved him then,
but her love was a fiery torment that burned and consumed her soul. She
seemed to feel it blistering, shrivelling, in the cruel heat.

Almost before she knew it, she had broken her silence, speaking as it
were in spite of herself, scarcely knowing in her anguish what she said.

"Yes, I know. I know what you are going to say. You are going to tell me
that I belong to you. And of course it is true,--I do. But if I stay
with you, I shall be--a murderess. Nothing will alter that."

"Stella!" he said.

His voice was stern, so stern that she flinched. He laid his hand upon
her, and she shrank as she would have shrunk from a hot iron searing her
flesh. She had a wild thought that she would bear the brand of it for
ever.

"Stella," he said again, and in both tone and action there was
compulsion. "I have come to tell you that you are making a mistake. I am
innocent of this thing you suspect me of."

She stood unresisting in his hold, but she was shaking all over. The
floor seemed to be rising and falling under her feet. She knew that her
lips moved several times before she could make them speak.

"But I don't suspect," she said. "The others suspect. I--know."

He received her words in silence. She saw his face as through a shifting
vapour, very pale, very determined, with eyes of terrible intensity
dominating her own.

Half mechanically she repeated herself. It was as if that devilish
thrumming in her brain compelled her. "The others suspect. I--know."

"I see," he said at last. "And nothing I can say will make any
difference?"

"Oh, no!" she made answer, and scarcely knew that she spoke, so cold and
numb had she become. "How could it--now?"

He looked at her, and suddenly he saw that to which his own suffering
had momentarily blinded him. He saw her utter weakness. With a swif
passionate movement he caught her to him. For a second or two he held
her so, strained against his heart, then almost fiercely he turned her
face up to his own and kissed the stiff white lips.

"Be it so then!" he said, and in his voice was a deep note as though he
challenged all the powers of evil. "You are mine--and mine you will
remain."

She did not resist him though the touch of his lips was terrible to her.
Only as they left her own, she turned her face aside. Very strangely
that savage lapse of his had given her strength.

"Physically--perhaps--but only for a little while," she said gaspingly.
"An