He saw that his audacity was not without its charm for her; her head was raised now, and her dark eyes, looking up, met his looking down, as she listened, with parted lips and deep-drawn breath. "Be sure of this," he said, "no man has ever loved you as I love you, or been willing to stake so much upon your love." The sinister truth which lurked in these words lent the sinister expression to his face again for a moment which she had sometimes seen in it. "How much I stake upon it you will never know. So be it. I am ready, I am willing. You see I am giving you time. I am not hurrying you into rash speech. I dare say you were not at all prepared for this when you and I met, and you took the initiative in what you intended to be an ordinary watering-place flirtation--while you were waiting for Arthur Felton, perhaps?" he said, savagely, for, as he went on, the savage nature of the man was rising within him, and for all that his grasp was on her soft white arm, and his gaze was searching the depths of her dark eyes, he was speaking rather to himself than to her; rather to the unchained devil within, than to the beautiful fatality before him. "It is possible you had some such notion," he said. "I don't ask you to acknowledge it, for if so, you have abandoned it." He stooped lower, his eyes looked closer into hers. She shrank back, and covered her face with her disengaged hand. "Yes," he went on, in a gentle tone, "I know you soon discovered that I am not made for make-believes; and now--now that you have sent for me, and I am here, what is it that you mean? You _cannot_ make me the pastime of an hour; you _cannot_ shake off the hold which such love as mine lays upon your life--would still lay upon it were you a feebler woman than you are. What then? Are you going to take the wine of life, or are you going to content yourself with the vapid draughts you have hitherto drank? You must tell me, and tell me to-night, what it is you mean; for a crisis in my life is come, and I must know, without paltering or delay, how it is to be dealt with." He lifted his hand from her arm, and standing directly before her, bade her look up and speak to him. She did not move. Then he sat down on a velvet footstool before her sofa, and drew her hands away from before her face. There were signs of agitation on it, and he read them, not quite correctly perhaps, but to his own satisfaction. "Listen to me," he said, in the gentlest tones within the compass of his voice. "I have a right--have I not?--to ask you, to know what is your meaning towards me? What did you bring me here for? Remember the words I have spoken to you, not once only, or twice; remember the story I told you on the balcony yonder; remember the tone you have occasionally adopted in all your levity, and then do not attempt to deny my right to speak as I am speaking, and to demand your answer." "You--you found me alone here--in my own house--and--"