Resistlessly it engulfed every nerve and fiber of her--wave upon wave of wild, primitive passion surged through her veins until her heart seemed bursting with the sweet, intense pain of it. Fiercely, in the hot, quick flame of passion, she strained him to her breast and her lips sought his in an abandon of feverish kisses. And in that moment she knew that, in all the world of men, this man was _her_ man. Always he had dominated her life--always she had known this great love, had fought against it, and feared it--and always she had held it in check. But now, alone in the night, with the man lying helpless in her arms, this mighty passion welled to the bursting of restraint. Her heart, subservient no longer to the will of her brain nor to creeds nor the tenets of convention, had this night come into its own, and she loved with the hot, savage mate-love of her pristine forebears. The man's lips moved feebly upon hers and the closed eyelids fluttered. The girl sprang to the stove and returned a second later bearing a thick porcelain cup steaming with strong, black coffee. She raised his head upon her arm and, holding the cup, let part of its contents trickle between his lips. He strangled weakly and swallowed. Again she tilted the cup and again he swallowed. "My darling! My darling!" she sobbed as the fluttering eyelids half opened and the lips moved, and then leaned close to catch their faintest murmur. "Jeanne," he whispered, "Jeanne, little girl----" and then the lips ceased to move, he shuddered slightly through the length of him, his eyes closed, and he slept. The thick cup thudded heavily upon the floor and its contents splashed unheeded over her gown, as the girl sat motionless, staring past the bunk at the blank wall of logs. The little nickel-plated alarm-clock ticked loudly in sharp, insistent threes, as she sat, white of face, with set lips and unwinking eyes staring stonily at the parallel logs of the wall. Centuries of supercultivation and the refinement of breeding were concentrated in that white-lipped, cold-eyed stare, which is the heart-mask of the _recherche_ woman of empire. And then--the mask dropped. The inevitable artificiality of years of unconscious eugenic selection melted in a breath before the fierce onrush of savage emotion. The girl sprang to her feet as the hot blood surged to her face and paced frantically back and forth in a fume of primordial hate. Her small fists clenched till pink nails bit deep into soft, pink palms. Her nostrils dilated, quivering; her eyes flashed, and the breath hissed through her lips in deep sobs of impotent rage against the woman who had robbed her of this man's love and whose name was upon his lips in the first moment of his awakening.