"Yes." Grimly he answered her. "You've seen the ugly side of me at last, and it's that that you are up against now." He paused a moment, then very sombrely he ended. "I might force you to tell me the whole truth of this business, but I shall not--simply because I don't want to hear it now. I know very well he's been making love to you, tempting you. But I am going to put the infernal matter away, and forget it--as far as possible. We may never reach the top of the world now, but we'll get out of this vile slough at any cost. You won't find me hard to live with if you only play the game,--and put that damned scoundrel out of your mind for good." "And do you think I shall ever be able to forgive you?" She lifted her head with an unexpectedness that was almost startling. Her eyes were alight, burning with a ruddy fire out of the whiteness of her face. She spoke as she had never spoken before. It was as if some strange force had entered into and possessed her. "Do you think I shall ever forget--even if you do? Perhaps I am not enough to you now to count in that way. You think--perhaps--that a slave is all you want, and that partnership, comradeship, friendship, doesn't count. You are willing to sacrifice all that now, and to sacrifice him with it. But how will it be--afterwards? Will a slave be any comfort to you when things go wrong--as they surely will? Will it satisfy you to feel that my body is yours when my soul is so utterly out of sympathy, out of touch, that I shall be in spirit a complete stranger to you? Ah yes," her voice rang on a deep note of conviction that could not be restrained--"you think you won't care. But you will--you will. A time will come when you will feel you would gladly give everything you possess to undo what you are doing to-day. You will be sick at heart, lonely, disillusioned, suspicious of me and of everybody. You will see the horrible emptiness of it all, and you will yearn for better things. But it will be too late then. What once we fling away never comes again to us. We shall be too far apart by that time, too hopelessly estranged, ever to be more to each other than what we are at this moment--master and slave. Through all our lives we shall never be more than that." She ceased to speak, and the fire went out of her eyes. She drooped in his hold as if all her strength had gone from her. He turned and put her steadily down into the chair again. He had heard her out without a sign of emotion, and he betrayed none then. He did not speak a word. But his silence said more to her than speech. It was as the beginning of a silence which was to last between them for as long as they lived.