She trembled and swayed in his arms like a slender shrub in a storm. It seemed as though, in his fervor, he were running the gamut of her every vulnerable sensibility. But as she felt his breath warm upon her hair and cheek she raised her eyes until they looked into his; then drew away from him with a gentle firmness. She was perturbed and shaken with the compounding of new emotions. She could not see all things clearly. She only knew that what she had expected least had come to pass. She had burnished her woman’s weapons in vain. She had sought to delude and beguile, and had only deluded and beguiled herself. As she had promised herself, she had drawn aside the mask, but she had unmasked herself at the same time. She had sought and she had found so many things that she knew not which way to turn. She must do something to gain time to think and plan. It was all so different to London. In spite of herself, she knew that he had conquered, and a suffusion of shame that she had been so easily won mounted to her neck and forehead, and she turned her head away. And then, in a last obedience to that instinct of self-preservation which sets a woman upon the defensive when she knows not what she would defend (nor would defend it if she could), she broke away from him and stood alone, pulsing with the effort, but triumphant. “Monsieur,” she breathed with difficulty, “it is unfair--to--to--press me so.” But he was relentless. “Ah, madame, am I then despised, as on that night in Dorset Gardens? Nay, I am as God made me--not the thing you would have supposed--” “Monsieur, have pity.” “Ah, then look at me again, Barbara. Look in my face and deny. Look in my eyes, _chérie_--deny me if you can.” She felt his arms encircle her, and she struggled faintly. “No, no. It is not so.” “Look me in the eyes, Barbara; I will not believe it else. If I am nothing to you, look me in the eyes and tell me so.” “No! No! No!” She raised her face until her closed eyes were on a level with his own. Then she opened them with an effort to look at him, as though to speak. A deafening crash again shook the _Sally_, so that the ship’s dry bones rattled and quivered under their feet like a being with the ague, and she seemed about to shake her timbers asunder. Mistress Barbara’s answer was not spoken, for at this rude sound a fit of trembling seized her again and she sank listlessly into the protecting shelter of his arms, and hid her face upon his bosom in a commingling of terror and wonderment that were only half real. “No, no,” she sobbed at last, “it is not true. It is not true.” Bras-de-Fer bent over her in a blind adoration and gently touched his lips to her hair. She made no further effort to resist him. Then, when the tear-stained face was raised to his own, in her eyes he read a different answer to his pleading. “_Bien adorée!_” he whispered, kissing her tenderly--“Barbara!”