Calamy halted, put his hand on Mary Thriplow’s shoulder and turned her round towards him. “By force, if necessary,” he said, looking into her face. Miss Thriplow returned his stare. He looked insolent still, still arrogantly conscious of power; but all the drowsiness and indolence that had veiled his look were now fallen away, leaving his face bare, as it were, and burning with a formidable and satanic beauty. At the sight of this strange and sudden transformation Miss Thriplow felt at once exhilarated and rather frightened. She had never seen that expression on a man’s face before. She had aroused passions, but never a passion so violent, so dangerous as this seemed to be. “By force?” By the tone of her voice, by the mockery of her smile she tried to exasperate him into yet fiercer passion. Calamy tightened his grip on her shoulder. Under his hand the bones felt small and fragile. When he spoke, he found that he had been clenching his teeth. “By force,” he said. “Like this.” And taking her head between his two hands he bent down and kissed her, angrily, again and again. Why do I do this? he was thinking. This is a folly. There are other things, important things. “Do you believe me now?” he asked. Mary Thriplow’s face was flushed. “You’re insufferable,” she said. But she was not really angry with him. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV “Why have you been so funny all vese days?” Lord Hovenden had at last brought himself to put the long-premeditated question. “Funny?” Irene echoed on another note, trying to make a joke of it, as though she didn’t understand what he meant. But of course she did understand, perfectly well. They were sitting in the thin luminous shadow of the olive trees. The bright sky looked down at them between the sparse twi-coloured leaves. On the parched grass about the roots of the trees the sunlight scattered an innumerable golden mintage. They were sitting at the edge of a little terrace scooped out of the steep slope, their legs dangling, their backs propped against the trunk of a hoary tree. “You know,” said Hovenden. “Why did you suddenly avoid me?” “Did I?” “You know you did.” Irene was silent for a moment before she admitted: “Yes, perhaps I did.” “But why,” he insisted, “why?” “I don’t know,” she answered unhappily. She couldn’t tell him about Aunt Lilian. Her tone emboldened Lord Hovenden to become more insistent. “You don’t know?” he repeated sarcastically, as though he were a lawyer carrying out a cross-examination. “Perhaps you were walking in your sleep all ve time.” “Don’t be stupid,” she said in a weary little voice. “At any rate, I’m not too stupid to see vat you were running after vat fellow Chelifer.” Lord Hovenden became quite red in the face as he spoke. For the sake of his manly dignity, it was a pity that his th’s should sound quite so childish.