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She did not ask him a second time what he meant. He had made her realize the utter futility of prevarication. Instead, she forced herself to meet his look boldly, and grapple with him with all her desperate courage.

“My brother owed you a debt of honour,” she said; “and it has been paid. What more do you want?”

A glitter of admiration shone for a moment through his cynicism. This was better than meek surrender. A woman who fought was worth conquering.

“You are not going to acknowledge, then,” he said, “that you–you personally–are in any way indebted to me?”

“Certainly not!” The girl’s eyes did not flinch before his. Save that she was trembling, he would scarcely have detected her fear. “You have done nothing for me,” she said. “You only served your own purpose.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Hyde softly. “So that is how you look at it, is it?”

He moved, and went close to her. Still she did not shrink. She was fighting desperately–desperately–a losing battle.

“Well,” he said, after a moment, in which she withstood him silently with all her strength, “in one sense that is true. I did serve my own purpose. But have you, I wonder, any idea what that purpose of mine was?”

He waited, but she did not answer him. She was nearly at the end of her strength. Hyde did not offer to touch her. He only smiled a little at the rising panic in her white face.

“Do you know what I am going to do now?” he said. “I am going to mess–it’s a guest night–and they will drink my health as the winner of the Ghantala Cup. And then I shall propose someone else’s health. Can you guess whose?”

She shrank then, shrank perceptibly, painfully, as the victim must shrink, despite all his resolution, from the hot iron of the torturer.

Hyde stood for a second longer, watching her. Then he turned. There was fiendish triumph in his eyes.

“Good-bye!” he said.

She caught her breath sharply, spasmodically, as one who suppresses a cry of pain. And then, before he reached the window, she spoke:

“Please wait!”

He turned instantly, and came back to her.

“Come!” he said. “You are going to be reasonable after all.”

“What is it that you want?” Her desperation sounded in her voice. She looked at him with eyes of wild appeal. Her defiance was all gone. The smile went out of Hyde’s face, and suddenly she saw the primitive savage in possession. She had seen it before, but till that moment she had never realized quite what it was.

“What do I want?” he said. “I want you, and you know it. That fellow Baring is not the man for you. You are going to give him up. Do you hear? Or else–if you prefer it–he will give you up. I don’t care which it is, but one or the other it shall be. Now do we understand one another?”

Hope stared at him, speechless, horror-stricken, helpless!

He came nearer to her, but she did not recoil, for as a serpent holds its prey, so he held her. She wanted to protest, to resist him fiercely, but she was mute. Even the power to flee was taken from her. She could only stand as if chained to the ground, stiff and paralyzed, awaiting his pleasure. No nightmare terror had ever so obsessed her. The agony of it was like a searing flame.

And Hyde, seeing her anguished helplessness, came nearer still with a sort of exultant deliberation, and put his arm about her as she stood.

“I thought I should win the trick,” he said, with a laugh that seemed to turn her to ice. “Didn’t I tell you weeks ago that I had–Hope?”

She did not attempt to answer or to resist. Her lips were quite bloodless. A surging darkness was about her, but yet she remained conscious–vividly horribly conscious–of the trap that had so suddenly closed upon her. Through it she saw his face close to her own, with that sneering, devilish smile about his mouth that she knew so well. And the eyes with their glittering savagery were mocking her–mocking her.