Page:The time spirit; a romantic tale (IA timespiritromant00snaiiala).pdf/124

 *tions. Such a situation seemed now to involve her in mysteries far down within, at the very core of being—mysteries she had hardly been aware of until that moment.

Again the question. She looked away, quite unable just then to meet his eyes. Her will was strong, her determination clear, but in spite of herself a deadly feeling crept upon her that she was a bird in a snare. Certain imponderables were in the room. The life forces were calling to each other; there was a curious magnetism in the very air they breathed.

She had meant and intended "No," but every instant made that little word more difficult to utter. A dominant nature had stolen the keys of her heart before she knew it. And as she fought against the inevitable, a subtle trick of the ape on the chain in the human breast, weighed the scales unfairly. Cousin Blanche and Cousin Marjorie were flung oddly, irrelevantly, fantastically, upon the curtain of her mind. The challenge of their ironical eyes was like a knife in the flesh. And then that private, particular devil, of whose existence, until that moment, she had been unaware, suddenly forced her to take up the gage those eyes had flung.

VII

"Do tell me!" cried Milly the breathless.

The sight of a lone, troubled Mary in the little sitting-room, the look on her face as she twisted a handkerchief into knots and coils had been too much for Milly. She was a downright person and the silence of Mary was so trying to a forthcoming nature that the query at the