wer
jaw. And the sight of it moved her strangely, loosening that last
binding as of frost. A swift madness of anger against whoso had
inflicted that ugly hurt arose in Katherine, while her studied
resignation, her strained passivity of mental attitude, went down
before a passion of fierce and primitive emotion. The spirit of battle
became dominant in her along with an immense necessity of loving and of
being loved. Tender phantoms of past joy ceased to solace. The actual,
the concrete, the immediate, compelled her with a certain splendour of
demand. Katherine appeared to grow taller, more regal of presence. The
noble energy of youth and its limitless generosity returned to her.
Instinctively she unfastened her pelisse at the throat, took the lace
coif from her head, letting it fall to the ground, and moved nearer.

Richard pushed the cup away from his lips.

"There's some one in the room, Vanstone!" he said, his voice harsh with
anger. "Some woman--I heard her dress. I told you all--whatever
happened--I would have no woman here."

But Katherine, undismayed, came straight on to the bedside. She loved.
She would not be gainsaid. With the whole force of her nature she
refused denial of that love.--For a brief space Richard looked at her,
his face ghastly and rigid as that of a Corpse. Then he raised himself
in the bed, stretching out both arms, with a hoarse cry that tore at
his throat and shuddered through all his frame. And, as he would have
fallen forward, exhausted by the effort to reach her and the lovely
shelter of her, Katherine caught and, kneeling, held him, his poor
hands clutching impotently at her shoulders, his head sinking upon her
breast. While, in that embrace, not only all the motherhood in her
leapt up to claim the sonship in him, but all the womanhood in her
leapt up to claim the manhood in him, thereby making the broken circle
of her being once more wholly perfect and complete, so that carrying
the whole dear burden of his fever-wasted body in her encircling arms
and upon her breast, even as she had carried, long since, that dear
fruit of love, the unborn babe, within her womb, Katherine was taken
with a very ecstasy and rapture of content.

"My beloved is mine--is mine!" she cried,--"and I am his."

Captain Vanstone was on his feet and half-way across the room.

"Man alive, but it hurts like merry hell!" he said, as he softly closed
the door.

CHAPTER III

CONCERNING A SPIRIT IN PRISON