"Don't shrink like that!" he exclaimed savagely. "By God! Do you think I'll stand being treated as though I were a leper? You avoid me all you can--detest the sight of me, I suppose! But remember one thing--you're going to be my wife. Nothing can alter that, and you belong--to--me"--emphasising each word separately. "You mayn't give me your smiles--but I'm damned if you shall give them to any other man." He thrust his face, distorted with anger, close to hers. "_Now_ do you understand?" She struggled in his grasp like a frightened bird, her eyes dilating with terror. She knew, only too well, what this big primitive-souled man could be like when the devil in him was roused, and his white, furious face and blazing eyes filled her with panic. "Roger! Let me go!" she cried, her voice quick with fear. "Let me go! You're hurting me!" "Hurting you?" With an effort he mastered himself, slackening his grasp a little, but still holding her. "Hurting you? I wonder if you realise what a woman like you can do to a man? When I first met you I was just an ordinary decent man, and I loved and trusted you implicitly. But now, sometimes, I almost feel that I could kill you--to make sure of you!" "But why should you distrust me? It's Isobel--Isobel Carson who's put these ideas into your head." "Perhaps she's opened my eyes," he said grimly. "They've been shut too long." "You've no right to distrust me--" "Haven't I, Nan, haven't I?" He held her a little away from him and searched her face. "Answer me! Have I no right to doubt you?" His big chest heaved under the soft fabric of his shirt as he stood looking down at her, waiting for her answer. She would have given the world to be able to answer him with a simple "No." But her lips refused to shape the word. There was so much that lay between them, so much that was complicated and difficult to interpret. Slowly her eyes fell before his. "I utterly decline to answer such a question," she replied at last. "It's an insult." His hands fell from her shoulders. "I think I'm answered," he said curtly, and, turning on his heel, he strode away, leaving Nan shaken and dismayed. As far as Maryon was concerned, he refrained from making any allusion to what had taken place that day in the music-room, and gradually the sense of shocked dismay with which his proposal had filled Nan at the time, grew blurred and faded, skilfully obliterated by his unfailing tact. But the remembrance of it lingered, tucked away in a corner of her mind, offering a terrible solution of her difficulties. He still demanded from her a large part of each day, on the plea that much yet remained to be done to the portrait, while Roger, into whose ears Isobel continued to drop small poisoned hints, became correspondingly more difficult and moody. The tension of the situation was only relieved by the comings and goings of Sandy McBain and the enforced cheerfulness assumed by the members of the Mallow household.