It was the merest whisper, reaching his ears like the touch of a butterfly's wing--hesitantly shy, and honey-sweet with the promise of summer. The next instant his arms were round her and he was holding her as though he would never let her go, passionately kissing the soft mouth, so close beneath his own. He lifted her off her feet, crushing her to him, and Diana, the woman in her definitely, vividly aroused at last, clung to him yielding, but half-terrified by the tempest of emotion she had waked. "My beloved! . . . _My soul_!" His voice was vehement with the love and passion at length unleashed from bondage; his kisses hurt her. There was something torrential, overwhelming, in his imperious wooing. He held her with the fierce, possessive grip of primitive man claiming the chosen woman as his mate. She struggled faintly against him. "Ah! Max--Max . . . . Let me go. You're frightening me." She heard him draw his breath hard, and then slowly, reluctantly, as though by a sheer effort of will, he set her down. He was white to the lips, and his eyes glowed like blue flame in their pallid setting. "Frighten you!" he repeated hoarsely. "You don't know what love means--you English." Diana stared at him. "'You English!' What--what are you saying? Max, aren't you English after all?" He threw back his head with a laugh. "Oh, yes, I'm English. But I'm something else as well. . . . There's warmer blood in my veins, and I can't love like an Englishman. Oh, Diana, heart's beloved, let me teach you what love is!" Impetuously he caught her in his arms again, and once more she felt the storm of his passion sweep over her as he rained fierce kisses on eyes and throat and lips. For a space it seemed as if the whole world were blotted out and there were only they two alone together--shaken to the very foundations of their being by the tremendous force of the whirlwind of love which had engulfed them. When at length he released her, all her reserves were down. "Max . . . Max . . . I love you!" The confession fell from her lips with a timid, exquisite abandon. He was her mate and she recognised it. He had conquered her. Presently he put her from him, very gently, but decisively. "Diana, heart's dearest, there is something more--something I have not told you yet." She looked at him with sudden apprehension in her eyes. "Max! . . . Nothing--nothing that need come between us?" Memories of the past, of all the incomprehensible episodes of their acquaintance--his refusal to recognise her, his reluctance to accept her friendship--came crowding in upon her, threatening the destruction of her new-found happiness. "Not if you can be strong--not if you'll trust me." He looked at her searchingly. "Trust you? But I do trust you. Should I have . . . Oh, Max!" the warm colour dyed her face from chin to brow--"Could I love you if I didn't trust you?"