stare out of the window. He stood looking at her for a moment,
with a strange light in his eyes. He made a step towards her. "I
HAVE you,", he said. "You are mine. Netted--caught. But mine." He
would have gone up to her and laid his hand upon her, but he did
not dare to do that yet. "I have you in my hand," he said, "in my
power. Do you hear--POWER!"

She remained impassive. He stared at her for half a minute, and
then, with a superb gesture that was lost upon her, went to the
door. Surely the instinctive abasement of her sex before Strength
was upon his side. He told himself that his battle was won. She
heard the handle move and the catch click as the door closed
behind him.



XXII

And now without in the twilight behold Mr. Hoopdriver, his cheeks
hot, his eye bright! His brain is in a tumult. The nervous,
obsequious Hoopdriver, to whom I introduced you some days since,
has undergone a wonderful change. Ever since he lost that 'spoor'
in Chichester, he has been tormented by the most horrible visions
of the shameful insults that may be happening. The strangeness of
new surroundings has been working to strip off the habitual
servile from him. Here was moonlight rising over the memory of a
red sunset, dark shadows and glowing orange lamps, beauty
somewhere mysteriously rapt away from him, tangible wrong in a
brown suit and an unpleasant face, flouting him. Mr. Hoopdriver
for the time, was in the world of Romance and Knight-errantry,