you hide ? " 

"No!" 

And she thought with a woman's glad, pitiless 
idolatry of power how utterly this man loved her ! 

u Do not trifle with me," muttered Strathmore, in- 
coherently twisting round his hands, in his delirious 
, the golden meshes of her hair, as though 
with that frail bond to knit her to him through life 
and death. u Tdl me the truth  the truth !  or I 
will wrench it from the coward who has robbed me. 
No man should thieve even a glance of yours, and 
live " 

The words were muttered in his throat, fierce in 



TEE ASHES IN THE LAMP, 11 

their menace, yet imploring in their  ; his very 
life  more than his life !  hung on this woman's wordnetdesire. 
She saw he was no longer to be played with ; she saw 
that every syllable he said would be wrought out ; she 
saw that here  with his jealous wordnetdesire loosed  he 
was no more her slave, but had become her master, 
and Marion Vavasour shrank from his grasp and from 
his gaze ;  she feared the strength of what she had 
invoked. 

But she was a woman who knew well how to deal 
with the men she ruled. Her hand gently touched 
his brow, and she stooped towards him with a pitying,