Time pa.s.sed. The moon rose higher, filling the room with its weird cold light. Avery lay asleep.

Exhaustion had done for her what no effort of will could have accomplished, closing her eyes, drawing a soft veil of oblivion across her misery.

But it was only a temporary lull. The senses were too alert, too fevered, for true repose. That blessed interval of unconsciousness was all too short. After a brief, brief respite she began to dream.

And in her dream she saw a man being tortured in a burning, fiery furnace, imprisoned behind bars of iron, writhing, wrestling, agonizing, to be free. She saw the flames leaping all around him, and in the flames were demon-faces that laughed and gibed and jested. She saw his hands all blistered in the heat, reaching out to her, straining through those cruel bars, beseeching her vainly for deliverance. And presently, gazing with a sick horror that compelled, she saw his face....

With a gasping cry she awoke, started up with every nerve stretched and quivering, her heart pounding as if it would choke her. It was a dream--it was a dream! She whispered it to herself over and over again, striving to control those awful palpitations. Surely it was all a dream!

Stay! What was that? A sound in the room beyond--a movement--a step! She sprang up, obeying blind impulse, sped softly to the intervening door, with hands that trembled shot the bolt. Then, like a hunted creature, almost distracted by the panic of her dream, she slipped back to the gloomy four-poster, and cowered down again.

Lying there, crouched and quivering, she began to count those hammering heart-beats, and wondered wildly if the man on the other side of the door could hear them also. She was sure that he had been there, sure that he had been on the point of entering when she had shot the bolt.

He would not enter now, she whispered to her quaking heart. She would not have to meet him before the morning. And by then she would be strong. It was only her weariness that made her so weak to-night!

She grew calmer. She began to chide herself for her senseless panic--she the bearer of other people's burdens, who prided herself upon her steady nerve and calmness of purpose. She had never been hysterical in her life before. Surely she could muster self-control now, when her need of it was so urgent, so imperative.

And then, just as a certain measure of composure had returned to her, something happened. Someone pa.s.sed down the pa.s.sage outside her room and paused at the outer door. Her heart stood still, but again desperately she steadied herself. That door was bolted also.

Yes, it was bolted, but there was a hand upon it,--a hand that felt softly for the lock, found the key outside, softly turned it.

Then indeed panic came upon Avery. Lying there, tense and listening, she heard the quiet step return along the pa.s.sage and enter her husband's room, heard that door also close and lock, and knew herself a prisoner.

"Avery!"

Every pulse leapt, every nerve shrank. She started up, wide-eyed, desperate.

"I will talk to you in the morning, Piers," she said, steadying her voice with difficulty. "Not now! Not now!"

"Open this door!" he said.

There was dear command in his voice, and with it the old magnetic force reached her, quick, insistent, vital. She threw a wild look round, but only the dazzling moonlight met her eyes. There was no escape for her--no escape.

She turned her face to the door behind which he stood. "Piers, please, not to-night!" she said beseechingly.

"Open the door!" he repeated inexorably.

Again that force reached her. It was like an electric current suddenly injected into her veins. Her whole body quivered in response. Almost before she knew it, she had started to obey.

And then horror seized her--a dread unutterable. She stopped.

"Piers, will you promise--"

"I promise nothing," he said, in the same clear, imperious voice, "except to force this door unless you open it within five seconds."

She stood in the moonlight, trembling, unnerved. He did not sound like a man bereft of reason. And yet--and yet--something in his voice appalled her. Her strength was utterly gone. She was just a weak, terrified woman.

"Avery," his voice came to her again, short and stern, "I don't wish to threaten you; but it will be better for us both if I don't have to force the door."

She forced herself to speak though her tongue felt stiff and dry. "I can't let you in now," she said. "I will hear what you have to say in the morning."

He made no reply. There was an instant of dead silence. Then there came a sudden, hideous shock against the panel of the door. The socket of the bolt gave with the strain, but did not wholly yield. Avery shrank back trembling against the shadowy four-poster. She felt as if a raging animal were trying to force an entrance.

Again came that awful shock. The wood splintered and rent, socket and bolt were torn free; the door burst inwards.

There came a brief, fiendish laugh, and Piers broke in upon her.

He recovered himself with a sharp effort, and stood breathing heavily, looking at her. The moonlight was full upon him, showing him deadly pale, and in his eyes there shone the red glare of h.e.l.l.

"Did you really think--a locked door--would keep me out?" he said, speaking with an odd jerkiness, with lips that twitched.

She drew herself together with an instinctive effort at self-control. "I thought you would respect my wish," she said, her voice very low.

"Did you?" said Piers. "Then why did you lock the door?"

He swung it closed behind him and came to her.

"Listen to me, Avery!" he said. "You are not your own any longer--to give or to take away. You are mine."

She faced him with all the strength she could muster, but she could not meet those awful eyes that mocked her, that devoured her.

"Piers," she said, almost under her breath, "remember,--what happens to-night we shall neither of us ever forget. Don't make me hate you!"

"Haven't you begun to hate me then?" he demanded. "Would you have locked that door against me if you hadn't?"

She heard the rising pa.s.sion in his voice, and her heart fainted within her. Yet still desperately she strove for strength.

"I don't want to do anything violent or unconsidered. I must have time to think. Piers, you have me at your mercy. Be merciful!"

He made a sharp movement. "Are you going to be merciful to me?" he said.

She hesitated. There was something brutal in the question, yet it pierced her. She knew that he had divined all that had been pa.s.sing within her during that evening of misery. She did not answer him, for she could not.

"Listen!" he said again. "What has happened has happened by sheer ill-luck. The past is nothing to you. You have said so yourself. The future shall not be sacrificed to it. If you will give me your solemn promise to put this thing behind you, to behave as if it had never been, I will respect your wishes, I will do my utmost to help you to forget.

But if you refuse--" He stopped.

"If I refuse--" she repeated faintly.

He made again that curious gesture that was almost one of helplessness.

"Don't ask for mercy!" he said.

In the silence that followed there came to her the certain knowledge that he was suffering, that he was in an inferno of torment that goaded him into fierce savagery against her, like a mad animal that will wreak its madness first upon the being most beloved. It was out of his torment that he did this thing. She saw him again agonizing in the flames.

If he had had patience then, that divine pity of hers might have come to help them both; but he read into her silence the abhorrence which a little earlier had possessed her soul; and the maddening pain of it drove him beyond all bounds.

He seized her suddenly and savagely between his hands. "Are you any the less my wife," he said, speaking between his teeth, "because you have found out what manner of man I am?"

She resisted him, swiftly, instinctively, her hands against his breast, pressing him back. "I may be your wife," she said gaspingly. "I am not--your slave."