In the stillness, she remembered--as something long passed--the sharp sound of her merriment. Looking round the room, she saw the piano standing open, and beneath its polished lid the black keys and the white. First it was their sharp contrast that seemed to interest her; then, as her attention dwelt on them, they assumed a certain power of reminiscence, of suggestion, as if they were symbolic of something outside themselves, something in the past peculiarly significant to her. With a mental process similar to that by aid of which dream and reality are separated until they stand recognizably on either side of the line between sleep and waking, with the laborious thought of one struggling against the last influence of a drug, she remembered how those black and white notes had imprinted themselves on her consciousness when, on that other occasion, Ordith had so nearly mastered her. The days intervening between that time and the present ran before her in swift procession. She saw herself as she was then; as she was now--then, fighting, determined, clear in mind; now, with even her will gone. By subtle process she had been changed, for the circumstances were unaltered. Slowly, day by day, by patience, by silence, by implied menace, by the bluff on which her father’s power depended, her fortress, unknown to her, had been undermined. Her father had come very near to winning, very near. He should not win! If she had not seen herself as a figure in an oleograph and laughed.... The ways of salvation! She laughed again. Ordith, with the first laugh still ringing in his ears, moved as if to come to her. But, on the instant, the tension that had held her failed. With the sob, not of a woman but of a little girl, she drooped and trembled and hid her face in her hands. She was crying like a child who, having come through some great fear, breaks down under confidence restored: tears of relief, of sanity snatched back, held--just held. “Margaret!” She dropped her hands, raised her head. Her eyes were swimming and glistening with tears, her cheeks flushed as if with happy excitement. “Oh, leave me alone, Nick--please--please! Nick--please. Promise you will leave me alone always.... I’m frightened. You could get anything you wanted at last. But you don’t want me--not really. It’s so much to me; so little to you. Please, Nick, is this the end?” “If you wish it.” She seized his hands between hers. “Even if he persuades?” “Yes.” “Your word? He’s so strong....” “My word.... Margaret--oh, you child!--I do care for you now more than ever.” Suddenly he kissed her. “There.... Have your own way. I’m not a devil, Margaret dear. But your seeing is different from mine--and your gods, I think. They won’t have us together.” “No.” She looked up with sudden curiosity. “Nick, you are superstitious like all great men? You--you wouldn’t have me now if I asked you? Would you? Would you?” He smiled at her with understanding, and admitted, “No.”