She flushed hotly and withdrew from the encircling arm. "You must never say a thing like that to me again," she said. Arnott merely smiled. The cloak once discarded can never be resumed as an effective disguise. He had summed her up in his mind and placed her to his entire satisfaction. She was no more sincere and no less vulnerable than the rest of her sex. Arnott held women cheaply in his thoughts, as men of his disposition are wont to do. The only woman whose cold virtue had opposed his libertine nature was his wife in England; and he hated her memory even. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN. That night Blanche sat up late in the little bedroom leading out from the room where the children slept. She sat at the open window, leaning with her arms on the sill, looking out at the sea. The moon silvered the waters and touched the lazy waves where they folded over before breaking upon the sands with a white darting flame, like liquid fire glancing from wave to wave. The murmur of the sea was in her ears, and a warm salt breeze blew in through the opening and stirred the heavy tresses of dark hair that, unloosened, fell about her bare shoulders in becoming disarray. Seen thus, with the light of the moon upon it, the calm face, in its dark setting, was strangely alluring, almost disturbingly beautiful. The discontent in the sombre eyes, the weary droop of her pose, lent a pathos that harmonised with the surroundings, with the serene lonely beauty of the night, and the restless murmur of the sea. Beneath the outward quiet of her bearing, a ferment of passionate emotions stirred incessantly. The girl's spirit was in fierce revolt; all the pride in her nature was up in arms. Certain things which Arnott had said to her on their walk that evening brought the angry blood surging to her cheeks merely to recall. She realised clearly that to remain in her present position in his household and keep her self-respect was impossible; to do so after what had passed were to give him the right to insult her. And yet she did not want to leave. The man exercised a hypnotic fascination over her. He was the only man who had ever made love to her,--who possessed the power to quicken her pulses, and bring a gladness and a softened look into her eyes. She believed she loved him. In an undisciplined, passionate way she did love him. He satisfied the hunger-ache in her heart. He was the sole human being to discover in her qualities to admire and like. No one, man or woman, had found her sufficiently attractive to desire her friendship. Blanche hated her own sex, and for the greater part despised men. For Arnott she experienced a kind of shrinking respect. She admired his strength and virility, his temperamental and intellectual force; even his position as a man of wealth and social standing appealed to the latent ambition of her avaricious nature. Because of these advantages which she enjoyed as his wife, she envied Pamela bitterly.