"What was the trouble?" Fowey pursued. "Not that I'm sorry--" "Oh, nothing much," Joan interrupted. "We just had a difference of opinion, and she had to fly off the handle like this. It doesn't matter." "It matters to me," Fowey announced significantly. Now Joan looked up, for the first time appreciating her position. "Oh ..." she said blankly. Fowey was advancing, with extended arms. She raised a hand to fend him off. "Don't!" she begged. "Please don't. I can't.... You must go, now--of course. I'm sorry. Good night." He paused, and she saw his face pale and working with passion; his small eyes blazing behind their thick lenses; his hands clenched by his sides, but not tightly, the fingers twitching nervously; his whole body trembling and shaken beyond control. She was conscious of an incongruous, unnatural, inexplicable feeling of pity for him. "Please be a good boy," she pleaded, "and go away." "No, I'm damned if I do. You asked me up here--I know now--just to tease me. But that's no good. I won't go!" He advanced another pace, his tone and manner changing. "O Joan, Joan!" he begged--"don't treat me so cruelly! You know I'm mad about you. Doesn't that mean anything to you, more than a chance to torment me? My God! what kind of a woman are you? I can't stand this. Flesh and blood couldn't. I'm only human. All this week I've kept away from you simply because I realized what you were--" "What am I?" Joan cut in quickly. Fowey choked again, with a gesture of impotent exasperation. "You," he almost shouted--"you're the woman I love and who's driving me mad--mad I tell you!" "Hubert! You mean that? You really love me?" "You know I do. You know I'm crazy about you. Haven't you seen it from the first?" Hesitating, Joan experienced a sense of one in deep waters. There was a sound as that of distant surf in her ears. All through her body pulses were throbbing madly. She struggled still a little, instinctively; but Fowey advantaged himself of that instant of indecision. He held her in his arms, now; her face was stinging beneath his kisses. Almost unconsciously, she lifted her arms and clasped them round his neck, drawing his face to hers. "You poor kid!" she murmured fondly, her eyes closed.... "You poor kid...." XXXVI Without knowing how she had come there, Joan found herself standing beside the outer doorway, in the narrow hall; one hand hugging about her the kimono she must have snatched up by instinct, while yet not fully wakened, the other hand fumbling with the lock; sleep clouding her brain like a fog, fatigue weighting her eyelids and chaining her limbs, panic hammering in her bosom. Overhead the doorbell was ringing imperatively, without interruption, even as it must have been ringing for many minutes before she was consciously awake. Dimly she felt that this alarm by night must portend something strange and terrible.