or feigned an altruism for which she would
indeed have despised him. The ruthlessness of his laugh--the laugh of
the red-blooded man who makes laws that he himself may be lawless shook
her with a wild appeal. "What do I care about any others--I want you!"
such was its message. And against this paradoxical wish to be
conquered, intensified by the magnetic field of his passion, battled her
self-assertion, her pride, her innate desire to be free, to escape now
from a domination the thought of which filled her with terror. She felt
his cheek brushing against her hair, his fingers straying along her arm;
for the moment she was hideously yet deliciously powerless. Then the
emotion of terror conquered--terror of the unknown--and she sprang
away, dropping her note-book and running to the window, where she stood
swaying.

"Janet, you're killing me," she heard him say. "For God's sake, why
can't you trust me?"

She did not answer, but gazed out at the primrose lights beginning to
twinkle fantastically in the distant mills. Presently she turned. Ditmar
was in his chair. She crossed the room to the electric switch, turning
on the flood of light, picked up her tote-book and sat down again.

"Don't you intend to answer your letters?" she asked.

He reached out gropingly toward the pile of his correspondence, seized
the topmost letter, and began to dictate, savagely. She experienced a
certain exultation, a renewed and pleasurable sense of power as she took
down his words.

CHAPTER IX

At certain moments during the days that followed the degree of tension
her relationship with Ditmar had achieved tested the limits of Janet's
ingenuity and powers of resistance. Yet the sense of mastery at being
able to hold such a man in leash was by no means unpleasurable to a
young woman of her vitality and spirit. There was always the excitement
that the leash might break--and then what? Here was a situation, she
knew instinctively, that could not last, one fraught with all sorts of
possibilities, intoxicating or abhorrent to contemplate; and for that
very reason fascinating. When she was away from Ditmar and tried to
think about it she fell into an abject perplexity, so full was it of
anomalies and contradictions, of conflicting impulses; so far beyond
her knowledge and experience. For Janet had been born in an age which
is rapidly discarding blanket morality and taboos, which has as yet
to achieve the morality of scientific knowledge,