But at his movement she moved also, drawing back.  “No!” she said.  Her voice was low, but not lacking in strength.  Having spoken, she went on almost without effort.  “You are building upon a false foundation.  If it were not so, I don’t think I could possibly forgive you.  As it is, I think when you realise your mistake you will find it hard to forgive yourself.  I have treated you as a friend because I thought I could do so with safety.  I thought for the sake of my friendship you had given up all thought of anything else.  I thought you were to be trusted and I trusted you.  Oh, I admit I ought to have known you better.  But I shall never make that mistake again.”

“No,” Nap said.  “I don’t think you will.”

He spoke deliberately; he almost drawled.  Yet a sense of danger stabbed her.  His sudden coldness was more terrible than his heat.

“But why say this to me now?” he said.  “Do you think it will make any difference?”

He had not moved as he uttered the words, and yet she felt as if he menaced her.  He made her think of a crouching tiger—­a tiger whose devotion had turned to sudden animosity.

She did not shrink from him, but her heart quickened.  “It must make a difference,” she said.  “You have utterly misunderstood me, or you would never have brought me here.”

“Don’t be too sure of that,” he returned.  “It may be that you can deceive yourself more easily than you can deceive me.  Or again, it may be that I have come to the end of my patience and have decided to take by storm what cannot be won by waiting.”

She drew herself up proudly.  “And you call that—­love!” she said, with a scorn that she had never before turned against him.  “You dare to call that—­love!”

“Call it what you will!” he flashed back.  “It is something that can crush your cold virtue into atoms, something that can turn you from a marble saint into a living woman of flesh and blood.  For your sake I’ve tried—­I’ve agonised—­to reach your level.  And I’ve failed because I can’t breathe there.  To-night you shall come down from your heights to mine.  You who have never lived yet shall know life—­as I know it—­to-night!”

Fiercely he flung the words, and the breath of his passion was like a fiery blast blown from the heart of a raging furnace.  But still she did not shrink before him.  Proud and calm she waited, bearing herself with a queenly courage that never faltered.

And it was as if she stood in a magic circle, for he raised no hand to touch her.  Without word or movement she kept him at bay.  Erect, unflinching, regal, she held her own.

He caught his breath as he faced her.  The beast in him slunk back afraid, but the devil urged him forward.  He came close to her, peering into her face, searching for that weak place in every woman’s armour which the devil generally knows how to find.  But still he did not offer to touch her.  He had let her go out of his arms when he had believed her his own, and now he could not take her again.