He drew her close, laughing at her with half-teasing tenderness. "Oh, Maud!" he said. "O queen of all the roses!"
But she hung back from him. It was almost as if something dragged her back. "I--I have something to say to you," she faltered confusedly. "I came to say it. What was it? Oh, what was it?"
His swarthy face was bending nearer, nearer. She saw the humorous lift of his black brows. "You have said it," he told her softly. "There is nothing left to say. There will never again be any need for words between us two."
He laughed at her again with a kind of kingly indulgence. His arms went round her, pressing her to him, ignoring her last, quivering effort to resist. His lips suddenly found her own.
And then it was that her eyes were opened, and her memory came back. In a flash of anguished understanding she was brought face to face with the realities of life. She knew that she had been enmeshed in a dream of evil delight, drawn unaccountably, by some hidden, devilish strategy to the very edge of that precipice that she had striven so desperately to avoid.
In that moment she would have torn herself free, but her strength was gone. Her body felt leaden and powerless; her throat too numb to utter any protest. Her visions had all fallen away from her, but she thought she heard the roar of the whirlpool below. And through all she was madly conscious of the lips that pressed her own, the arms that drew her closer, always closer, to the gulf.
She thought that her senses were leaving her, so utterly helpless had she become. An awful cloud seemed to be hanging over her,--slowly, slowly descending. Faintly she tried to pray for deliverance, but his lips stilled the prayer. Against her will, as one horribly compelled, she knew that she returned his kiss.
And then she was lying on the low divan with Charlie beside her, holding her, calling her his queen, his captured angel--his wife.
She did not know exactly what happened afterwards, for a great darkness took her. She only knew that she was suddenly lifted and borne away. She only heard the rush of the whirlpool as it closed over her head.
CHAPTER XIX