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392 battle. If she could not be to him, now, what he had thought her, she would make herself a new value to him. They might be fellow-sinners, but he should not, for all that, hold her for less.

At dawn he came into her room, came and put his head down on her pillow, and said wearily that he could not sleep. At that she burst out crying wildly, sobbed out passionately her humility, her regret, her fear, her love. And they clung together like two waifs in a storm, feeling darkness and danger all about them … All that day Basil spent moodily by himself, fitfully trying to work, or tramping about the place. In the afternoon a cablegram came for Teresa—her informant said that the danger was past, and Crayven safe and the storm broke out afresh. Basil's resentment surged up furiously—Teresa replied bitterly.

"You treat me like a slave," she said at last, in deep humiliation. "I am an individual as much as you. You haven't the right to judge me."

"But I do judge you. Either you belong to me, or you don't. It's as simple as that, and you can choose. If you belong to me, you don't belong even by a thought to anyone else. That's all there is to it. If you're my wife, you'll have no lovers, by letter or any other way. You'll have no more letters from Crayven"