"It was hard, very hard," she began. "It commenced in that first careless, ignorant year I told you about. I was fighting it all the time; fighting it when you were with me. That was really why I broke out of Mowrey’s Company. Men—such beasts of men!—proffered their help continually, but not upon terms that I could accept. It seemed, eventually, that I must surrender. I taught myself to think that some day, perhaps when I stood at last upon the very threshold—" she paused and looked over her shoulder at some unseen terror. "But the time never came. I burst through the barriers ahead of my pursuing fears." The actress ceased to speak and sat breathing quickly, as if from the effects of an exhausting chase. Hampstead turned and walked to the window, where, throwing up the sash, he stood filling his lungs deeply with delicious, refreshing draughts of the outside air. Coming back, he halted before her to say in tones of earnest conviction: "Marien"—he had called her Marien!—"I feel as if the burden of years had been removed. Few things have ever lain upon my heart with a more oppressive sense of the awful than this vision of you, so beautiful and so possessed of genius, consecrating yourself with such noble devotion to a lofty, artistic aim, and yet prepared to—to—" His words faded to a horrified whisper, and finding himself unable to conclude the sentence, he reached down and took her hand in both of his, shaking it emotionally while he was able presently to say reverently and with unction: "God has preserved you, Marien. You owe Him everything." "It was you who preserved me," she amended, with jealous emphasis and that look again of hungry devotion which he had seen first in the church. "It is you to whom I owe everything." "I preserved you?" Hampstead asked, now completely mystified, as he remembered with what scornful words and looks she had whipped him from her presence. "I do not understand. We pass from mystery to mystery. Is it that which you said you must tell me?" "No. I have told you what I wanted to tell you." The woman was again entirely at her ease, shrugging her beautiful shoulders and yawning lazily,—a carefully-staged and cat-like yawn, in which she appeared for an instant to show sharp teeth and claws, and then as suddenly to bury them in velvet. The minister stood gazing at her doubtfully. *CHAPTER XXII* *PURSUIT BEGINS* Both recognized that the time had come to close the interview, and each was extremely pleased with its result. Marien had demonstrated to her complete satisfaction that this minister was still a man; that his flesh was wax and would therefore melt. She believed that to-night she had seen it soften.