He repeated her words with a burlesque shudder. But the taunts fell upon deaf ears. Kate was engrossed in the shame of his proposal. It was so characteristic of him, she thought. He had chosen the one device which would humiliate her most effectually. Its very puerility added to her sense of degradation. There was a touch of the ludicrous in the notion so grotesquely incongruous with the pain it caused her. She pictured the scene with a spectator. "How he would laugh!" she thought, bitterly. However, there would be no spectator--and it was the only way. "Well?" Hawke asked. "Yes!" she replied. He released her wrists, and she stood up and faced him. He took the letters and handed them to her, one by one; and for each letter that he gave her, she kissed him on the lips. And outside the window was the spectator. Only he did not laugh. Hawke also had grown serious. The sight of Kate Nugent after so long an interval, the familiar sound of her voice, and to some degree also a certain distorted pleasure which he drew from the knowledge of Gordon's proximity, had served to prepare his passions. Now they were tinder to the touch of her lips. So, as he let the last letter go and she turned her face upwards to complete the bargain, he suddenly placed his hands behind her shoulders, drew her towards him, and returned her kiss with a fervour. The change in him came almost as a relief to Kate. It diminished her sense of humiliation. For the moment he began to show passion, the less she felt herself his toy. So, for a second, she did not resist his embrace. Then she struggled to free herself. "I have paid you," she said. Hawke dropped his arms, and she moved towards the fireplace. One by one, she noted the dates of the letters, tore them across and let them fall into the flames. Then she stood thinking. "You have not given me all." "All I showed you." "There are four more, written on my way home from Calcutta, Aden, Brindisi, and London." "Three! You were rude enough to burn one." "Where are they?" "Here!" Hawke tapped his breast pocket as he spoke. "Fulfil your bargain! Give them to me!" "They will cost more." CHAPTER IV