Her face, so close below his own, was milk-white in the moonlight, and her hair glimmered with strange, lurking lights. Wavering gold of hair and eyes and scarlet line of lips--they roused the devil in him. His mouth crushed down on hers once more. "You may hate me--but, all the same, you'll marry me! I swear it!" he said with grim assurance. "I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth." It was very quietly uttered, but the absolute conviction of her answer seemed to arrest him. He loosened his clasp of her body, but with the--same movement his fingers slid to her wrist, prisoning it. "Who would you marry?" he demanded. She stood perfectly still, unresisting to the grip of his hand on her wrist. There was a mute suggestion of scorn in this very surrender to physical coercion, a poise that asserted an utter freedom of spirit--a freedom of which he could not rob her. "You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?" she returned. "Is it young Brabazon--Tony Brabazon?" he pursued, ignoring her reply and speaking with an odd kind of eagerness. Ann was silent. The instinct of her sex was working in her--the instinct to conceal her real hurt, to throw dust in the eyes of the man who was seeking to tear her secret from her. So she remained silent, and the sudden gleam in Brett's eyes showed that he believed he was answered. "Then you have thought of marrying--Tony Brabazon?" he said searchingly. "Perhaps I have," she admitted, reflecting with a brief flash of humour that, in this particular instance, the simple truth was quite the most misleading thing imaginable. Brett regarded her with a peculiar expression in which resentment and a certain need of indulgence were strangely mingled. "And you've thought better of it?" he continued, rather as though he were stating a fact of which he had some intrinsic knowledge. Ann felt a trifle puzzled. He and Tony were only card-room acquaintances, and it seemed unlikely that the latter would have confided in him. Yet Brett certainly spoke as though his cognisance of how matters stood betwixt herself and Tony were based on something more substantial than mere guesswork. "That, also, is possible," she answered non-committally. "And just as well," commented Brett. "He's a harum-scarum rake of a boy. All the same, as I told you once before, the past doesn't matter to me. It's the future that counts." He paused, as though he expected her to volunteer some reply. But she merely eyed him with a look of steady indifference. "You understand, Ann?" he said, with a species of urgency in his tones. "It sounds quite simple," she replied shortly. "I think I understand plain English--though what you say doesn't interest me. Do you mind releasing my wrist, now?" "You won't run away if I do?" She shrugged her shoulders.