Winona caught her throat, silenced suddenly. "Can't you tell me?" "I'm all right now," said Winona, shaking her head. She disengaged herself bruskly, sitting up, twisting her fingers in the physical effort at control. She turned, clutching Doré. "Did Blainey--he--what did he say?" Doré, inventing details, building up a favorable incident, exaggerated the importance, recounted the interview. "I told him Zeller was after you. You know how he hates Zeller! He's crazy to steal you! You'll see! Everything will work like a charm--and the part just for you!" She continued optimistically pouring out encouragement. Winona allowed herself to be convinced, grasping at straws. They remained talking deeply of difficulties and discouragements, always avoiding the questions that lay below. Once Doré had said tentatively: "Winona, wouldn't it help you just to talk out everything--tell me everything? I'd understand. Do trust me!" But the girl, resisting, answered hastily: "No! no! Not now! Some day, perhaps." Doré made no further effort. She drew her arm about her. "Then let me quiet you," she said softly. Winona, without resistance, allowed herself to go into her arms. They ceased speaking, clinging to each other there in the dark, and a strange sensation came to Doré at the touch of the body clinging to her, these unseen arms so tenaciously taut: it seemed to her almost that she heard another voice, mastering her physically and morally, making her suddenly flexible and without defense, a voice saying: "Now, stop acting!" "All right. Better now. I can sleep," said the girl in her arms. "Thanks." Dodo rose and went gliding back. Snyder, open-eyed, made no sound. She was grateful to her for this, divining the reason. Back in her bed, huddling under the covers, she recalled Winona with a feeling of horror. To lose one's courage like that--how terrible! And if she herself were thus to be transformed, if all her indomitable audacity should suddenly go-- "There's some man back of it all," she said, thinking of Winona. "There always is a man." Yet she had been on the point of rapturously hugging the first dream that had come to her in an uncomprehended moment, of submitting to a man--the very thought flung her back into intuitive revolt. "But, if it isn't love, how could he have such power over me? Could there be such a vertigo without true love? Could such a thing be possible?" Time and time again she put these questions, finding different answers. At times she let herself go deliciously, stretching out her arms, conjuring up that first penetrating embrace. At others, fiercely aroused, she resisted him with every fiber of her body, rejecting submission, resolved to combat him, to subordinate him, to retain always her defiant supremacy, to revenge her momentary defeat by some future victory.