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He stiffened at her touch.

“You had better go to bed,” he said gruffly, and made as if he would rise.

But she checked him with a dignity all her own.

“Wait, please; I want to speak to you.”

“Not to thank me, I hope,” he said.

“No, not to thank you.” She paused an instant, and seemed to hesitate. “I–I really want to ask you something,” she said at length.

He reached up and removed her hand from his shoulder.

“Well?” he questioned.

“Don’t hold me at arms’ length!” she pleaded gently. “It makes things so difficult.”

“What is it you want to know?” he asked without relaxing.

She stood silent for a few seconds as if summoning all her courage. Then at length, her voice very low, she spoke.

“When you said that you wanted me for your wife, did you mean that you–loved me?”

He made an abrupt movement, and his fingers closed tightly upon her wrist. For a moment or more he sat in tense silence, then he got to his feet.

“Why do you want to know?” he demanded harshly.

She stood before him with bent head.

“Because,” she said, and there was a piteous quiver in her voice, “I am lonely, and I have a very empty heart. And–and–if you love me it will not frighten me to know it. It will only–make me–glad.”

He put his hand on her shoulder. “Do you know what you are saying?” he questioned.

“Yes,” she said under her breath.

“Are you sure?” he persisted.

She raised her head impulsively, and, with a gesture most winning, most confident, she stretched up her arms to him.

“Yes,” she said. “I mean it! I mean it! I want–to be loved!”

His arms were close about her as she ended, and she uttered the last words chokingly with her face against his breast. The effort had cost her all her strength, and she clung to him panting, almost fainting, while panic–wild, unreasoning panic–swept over her. What was this man to whom she had thus impulsively given herself–this man whom all men feared?

Nevertheless, she grew calmer at last, awaking to the fact that though his hold was tense and passionate, he still retained his self-control. She commanded herself, and turned her face upwards.

“Then you do love me?” she said tremulously.

His eyes shone into hers, red as the inner, intolerable glow of a furnace. He did not attempt to make reply in words. He seemed at that moment incapable of speech. He only bent and kissed her fiercely, burningly, even brutally, upon the lips. And so she had her answer.

VII

It was a curious establishment over which Sybil found herself called upon to preside. The native, Beelzebub, was her only domestic, and, as Mercer had predicted, she found him very willing if not always efficient. One thing she speedily discovered regarding him. He went in deadly fear of his master, and invariably crept about like a whipped cur in his presence.

“Why is it?” she said to Curtis once.

But Curtis only shrugged his shoulders in reply.

He was a continual puzzle to her, this man. There was no servility about him, but she had a feeling that he, too, was in some fashion under Mercer’s heel. He made himself exceedingly useful to her in his silent, unobtrusive way; but he seldom spoke on his own initiative, and it was some time before she felt herself to be on terms of intimacy with him. He was an excellent cook; and he and Beelzebub between them made her duties remarkably light. In fact, she spent most of her time riding with her husband, who was fully occupied just then in overlooking the shearers’ work. She also was keenly interested, but he never suffered her to go among the men. Once, when she had grown tired of waiting for him, and followed him into one of the sheds, he was actually angry with her–a new experience, which, if it did not seriously scare her, made her nervous in his presence for some time afterwards.