"Then you really love me?" I cried in quick earnestness, bending over her, my arm about her slim waist. But she shuddered within my grasp. Her frame was shaken by a convulsive sob, and gazing upon me with serious eyes she, in a low whisper, gave her answer. "Alas! I cannot--I--I dare not!" I drew back crushed and hopeless. Once again the strange thought possessed me that Mary Blain held her within her power; that although she actually loved me she feared the relentless vengeance of that woman who posed as her most intimate friend, who smiled upon us both, although in her heart was a fierce and jealous hatred. Eva's was a strange character. She seemed a brilliant antithesis--a compound of contradictions--of all that I most detested, of all that I most admired. Her whole character seemed a triumph of the external over the innate; even though she presented at first view a splendid and perplexing anomaly, there was yet deep meaning and wondrous skill in the enigma when I came to analyse and decipher it. What was most astonishing in Eva's character was its antithetical construction, its consistent inconsistency, which rendered it quite impossible to reduce it to any elementary principles. The impression she gave was that of perpetual and irreconcilable contrast. In those months I had known her she had enchanted me. Her mental accomplishments, her unequalled grace, her woman's wit and woman's wiles, her irresistible allurements, her starts of hauteur, her vivacity of imagination, her petulant caprice, her fickleness and her falsehood, her tenderness and her truth, all had dazzled my faculties and bewitched my fancy. She held absolute dominion over me. My reference to that fatal night when I had discovered her apparently dead in that weird house in Kensington had utterly unnerved her. I had apparently, by those words, given her proof of the strong suspicion which she had entertained, and now she held aloof from me as from an enemy. Again and again Boyd's forcible words recurred to me. Try how I would I could not place from me the increasing belief that she had actually given me that fatal draught on the last occasion when we met. Yet, after all, she had my welfare at heart to some extent, or she would not utter this strange inexplicable warning; she would not have so pointedly told me that the family whose guests she was were my actual enemies. The latest passion of my love had long ago kindled into a quenchless flame, and again, after this declaration of fear which she had uttered, I repeated my inquiry as to its cause. But she shook her head, and remained silent to all my entreaty, even though her panting breast plainly showed her agitation. Had she, I wondered, really perpetrated a deed of horror? Was she, although so pure-looking and so beautiful, one of those women with inexorable determination of purpose, an actual impersonation of the evil powers?