her so powerless should lessen. She heard his voice at the door and her
icy fingers grasped at the book that had slipped to the ground. The
thick rugs deadened the sound of his movements, but she knew
instinctively that he had come in and gone back to the divan where he
had been sitting before. She knew that he was looking at her. She could
feel his eyes fixed on her and she quivered with the consciousness of
his stare. She waited, shivering, for him to speak or move. His methods
of torture were diverse, she thought with dreary bitterness. Behind the
tent in the men's lines a tom-tom was beating, and the irregular rhythm
seemed hammering inside her own head. She could have shrieked with the
agony of it.

"Come here--Diane."

She started, for a moment hardly recognising the Gallic rendering of
her name, and then flushed angrily without answering or moving. It was
a very little thing to stir her after all that had been done, but the
use of her name flamed the anger that had been almost swamped in fear.
The proprietory tone in his voice roused all her inherent obstinacy.
She was not his to go at his call. What he wanted he must take--she
would never give voluntarily. She sat with her hands gripped tightly in
her lap, breathing rapidly, her eyes dark with apprehension.

"Come here," he repeated sharply.

Still she took no notice, but the face that he could not see was
growing very white.

"I am not accustomed to having my orders disobeyed," he said at last,
very slowly.