"Don't!" she entreated like a child. "I am so tired. Let me sleep."
"My poor dear, I know all about it," a motherly voice made answer.
"But it's time for you to wake."
She did not grasp the words—only, very vaguely, their meaning; and this she made a determined, but quite fruitless, effort to defy. In the end, being roused in spite of herself, she opened her eyes and gazed upwards.
And all his life long Nick Ratcliffe remembered the reproach that those eyes held for him. It was as if he had laid violent hands upon a spirit that yearned towards freedom, and had dragged it back into the sordid captivity from which it had so nearly escaped.
But it was only for a moment that she looked at him so. The reproach faded swiftly from the dark eyes and he saw a startled horror dawn behind it.
Suddenly she raised herself with a faint cry. "Where am I?" she gasped. "What—what have you done with me?"
She stared around her wildly, with unreasoning, nightmare terror. She was lying on a bed of fern in a narrow, dark ravine. The place was full of shadow, though far overhead she saw the light of day. At one end, only a few yards from her, a stream rushed and gurgled among great boulders, and its insistent murmur filled the air. Behind her rose a great wall of grey rock, clothed here and there with some dark growth. Its rugged face was dented with hollows that looked like the homes of wild animals. There was a constant trickle of water on all sides, an eerie whispering, remote but incessant. As she sat there in growing panic, a great bat-like creature, immense and shadowy, swooped soundlessly by her.
She shrank back with another cry, and found Nick Ratcliffe's arm thrust protectingly about her.
"It's all right," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "You're not frightened at flying-foxes, are you?"
Recalled to the fact of his presence, she turned sharply, and flung his arm away as though it had been a snake. "Don't touch me!" she gasped, passionate loathing in voice and gesture.