instinctive, the response of her incalculable injury, made any
contact with him hateful. It was utterly beyond her power to
explain. A greater mystery still partly unfolded--whatever she had
hoped from Pleydon belonged to the special emotion that had
possessed her since earliest childhood.

In the immediate tragedy of her helplessness, with Dodge Pleydon
impatient for an assurance, she paused involuntarily to wonder about
that hidden imperative sense. There was a broken mental fantasy
of--of a leopard bearing a woman in shining hair. This was succeeded
by a bright thrust of happiness and, all about her, a surging like the
imagined beat of the wings of the Victory in Markue's room. Almost
Pleydon had explained everything, almost he was everything; and then
the other, putting him aside, had swept her back into the misery of
doubt and loneliness.

"I can't marry you," she said in a flat and dragged voice. He
demanded abruptly:

"Why not?"

"I don't know." She recognized his utter right to the temper that
mastered him. For a moment Linda thought Pleydon would shake her.
"You feel that way now," he declared; "and perhaps next month; but
you will change; in the end I'll have you."

"No," she told him, with a certainty from a source outside her
consciousness. "It has been spoiled."

He replied, "Time will discover which of us is right. I'm almost