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Rh usually through no mere preference on his part; he does what he is driven to do. I have got to go through with this; I have got to see that in the end I don't lose out. You seem to know a very great deal; let me tell you something that you don't know. It is believed now that you were brought here forcibly. Here you shall stay … alone with me … all of today and tonight and tomorrow and tomorrow night. Then some of your friends, led here as by chance by a certain one of your guests, will find us together. Then, since it was I and I alone who told the kidnapping story, how is it going to look for you, Beatrice Corliss? What will they say?"

His words had come slowly, clearly and coolly. But swift had been the mounting of blood rushing into her cheeks, swift the blazing fires in her eyes.

"They will understand what I wish them to understand," he continued rather more quickly. "Compromised you will have been already, since they think that Steele has you. Do you wish further compromise, your name and mine food for gossip?"

Readily enough and more than once had she called Steele "Brute!" Embry's words she heard in dumb, frozen silence.

"You will marry me," he told her, his tone ringing with conviction, "because I love you, because I am the man for you, because you half love me now, … and finally, because there is nothing left for you; that or a bandied name. You have called me desperate. I am. Do you know just what that means?"

At one moment red with anger, now was she white