"It _is_ all rot," Lizzie said sharply--"I can only speak as a woman, of course, but I know that what every woman ever born into this world has wanted is just to be taken by someone stronger than herself and be beaten or kissed, loved or strangled as the case may be. Believe me, it is so." Roddy looked at her, some new thought, perhaps a prologue to some new determination, shining from his eyes. "By Jove!" he said. "I believe you're right, Miss Rand--I do indeed. _Every_ woman, would you say?" "Every woman," said Lizzie firmly. Their eyes met. The sure steadiness of her gaze, the way that she sat there, her little body so sure and resolute, her very neat composure an argument against lightheaded reasoning, encouraged him beyond any help that he had yet found. Their gaze seemed long and intimate; the colour rose and flushed his brown cheeks and into his eyes there crept that consciousness of a victory about to be won, although the odds were hard against him. The door opened behind him and he turned at the sound and saw that Rachel had come in. Her entry gave him now, as it always did, a conviction that during her absence he hadn't had the least idea as to how splendid she really was. She brought into that little stone hall a wild colour, a strong, fine challenge to anything small, or shackled or conventional. Her walk had given her cheeks a flame, the black furs round her throat, the black coat falling below her knees, a red feather in her round black fur cap, all these things set off and accentuated the brilliant fire and energy of her eyes. As she came towards them then so splendid was she that Lizzie was herself for an instant lost in admiration--She lit the hall, she lit the house, she lit the country and the evening sky. To Roddy, as he looked at her, there stole the spirit of some pagan ancestor telling him that here was his capture, that this fine creature was his to bind, to burden, to chastise, as his lordly pleasure might be. Rachel, meanwhile, had come in from her walk, unappeased, unsated; the exertion had only succeeded in stirring in her a deeper, more urgent uneasiness. During these last weeks she had known no moment of peace. She had come down to Seddon determined to do her duty to Roddy; she had found that at every turn her duty to Roddy involved more than any determination could force her to give. She had not known what that last interview with Breton would do to every situation that followed it. It seemed to her then that those last words with him would make her duty plain, they had only made her duty harder. She could not now act, think, sleep, move but that last kiss, those last words of his, that last vision of him standing, struggling so finely for control--these things pursued her, caught her eyes and held them.