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The crisis came one evening. Pamela, on her way to bed, had come out on to the piazza for a few minutes. It was a beautiful frosty night, and the living-room was unpleasantly hot. Power had gone out after supper, and for the moment she had forgotten him. His sudden appearance on the steps leading up from the garden startled her, but she stood still and watched him quietly. He did not move nearer, nor did he speak, but his eyes seemed to draw hers and hold them fast. They had nothing of the expression which so terrified her; for once they were piteous, soft, and pleading, like a dog’s. For perhaps half a minute she stood motionless, then it seemed to her that some force, gentle but irresistible, was impelling her towards Power. She felt herself swaying slightly in his direction—her will was drugged, her strength slipping away. . . . Suddenly he put his hand out, and as his fingers encountered her arm the spell was broken. Pamela drew back, then without a word from either of them, she fled away along the piazza, and so into the house and her own room.

There was no lock on her door, and she felt as if she must bolt and bar herself away from the terror which came rushing upon her. She pulled her heavy trunk across the room till it lay against the door; then she flung herself upon her bed, and lay there in the darkness. Frightened as she had been before, the past weeks held nothing of the horror which seethed in her brain now. However much Aunt Rosa and Power had tormented and bewildered