Then, impulsively, he poured forth a flood of words, ardent, impassioned, throbbing with that fiery sex-love that dominates the entire world--selfish, unheeding, remorseless--words of that terrible overwhelming passion that will not be long denied. "That's how I want to be loved," she whispered, but flung herself away from his grasp just in order to be drawn close once more. He seized her convulsively, held her in a cruelly fast grip, covering her cheeks, her brow, her mouth with kisses, violent and tender in turns. At last, pressing his face against hers, he rested motionless. She felt the influence of the contact spread itself slowly throughout her entire frame, subtle and concentrated as electricity, and under its power her breast heaved, and she breathed only in short troubled gasps. The whole room, the whole world, seemed to be throbbing, to be trembling--perhaps it was only the arms that enfolded her that quivered--she neither knew nor cared to know. A deep silence held sway. The only moment's speech was when Geoffrey murmured a sudden question about their marriage, begging, imploring for an early date. It should be quite soon, Evarne promised. It should be within six weeks, five weeks, a month, less still, if he so desired. She had hesitated perceptibly before she answered. This definite and verbal plighting of her troth was opposed--actively, violently--for a few moments, by the resurrection of those scruples she fancied had faded away once and for all--false and misleading will-o'-the-wisps of chivalrous truth and honour, leading the unwise into bogs of wild despair and utter misery. When at last she did speak it was in a voice fraught with tremulous emotion, low, yet inexpressibly thrilling--notes softer than the cooing of wood-doves, and which reverberated upon the young artist's highly-strung nerves with subtle emphasis. More than once Evarne had thought that his nature now was not unlike what her own had been originally, before three years of constant effort to please a jaded, middle-aged man, added to unbroken association with coarse, depraved minds, had sullied her soul, blunted her finer susceptibilities, ruined her taste for the more delicate viands of love's feast. Once upon a time she had sought with all her strength to keep the affection that was offered her free from all savour of passion; now, when devotion, as poetical, refined and idealistic as imagination could devise had been laid at her feet, she had felt starved, chilled, unsatisfied.