"

Still I did not answer him, feeling a certain shame, not to say disgust.
Then he began to pay me some compliments on my appearance.

"Do you know you're charming, my dear, really charming!"

That stung me, and made me shudder, I don't know why, unless it was
because the words gave me the sense of having been used before to other
women. I turned my eyes away again.

"Don't turn away, dear. Let me see those big black eyes of yours. I
adore black eyes. They always pierce me like a gimlet."

He reached forward as he spoke and drew me to him. I felt frightened and
pushed him off.

"What's this?" he said, as if surprised.

But after another moment he laughed, and in the tone of a man who had
had much to do with women and thought he knew how to deal with them, he
said:

"Wants to be coaxed, does she? They all do, bless them!"

Saying this he pulled me closer to him, putting his arm about my waist,
but once more I drew and forcibly pushed him from me.

His face darkened for an instant, and then cleared again.

"Oh, I see," he said. "Offended, is she? Paying me out for having paid
so little court to her? Well, she's right there too, bless her! But
never mind! You're a decidedly good-looking little woman, my dear, and
if I have neglected you thus far, I intend to make up for it during the
honeymoon. So come, little gal, let's be friends."

Taking hold of me again, he tried to kiss me, putting at the same time
his hand on the bosom of my dress, but I twisted my face aside and
prevented him.

"Oh! Oh! Hurt her modesty, have I?" he said, laughing like a man who was
quite sure both of himself and of me. "But my little nun will get over
that by and by. Wait awhile! Wait awhile!"

By this time I was trembling with the shock of a terror that was
entirely new to me. I could not explain to myself the nature of it, but
it was there, and I could not escape from it.

Hitherto, when I had thought of my marriage to Lord Raa I had been
troubled by the absence of love between us; and what I meant to myself
by love--the love of husband and wife--was the kind of feeling I had for
the Reverend Mother, heightened and deepened and spiritualised, as I
believed, by the fact (with all its mysterious significance) that the
one was a man and the other a woman.

But this was something quite different. Not having found in marriage
what I had expected, I was finding something else, for there could be no
mistaking my husband's meaning w