"Of you."

"All that time? Of poor, plain, ordinary me?"

"You are mine," she said with vehemence, and looked at him with what he called her "hungry-beast" eyes.

"You would like to eat me, I think."

"Yes. And I should begin here; this is the bit of you I love best"—and before he knew what she was going to do, she had stooped, and he felt her teeth in the skin of his neck.

"That's a strange way of showing your love," he said, and involuntarily put his hand to the spot, where two bluish-red marks had appeared.

"It's my way. I want you—I WANT you. I want to feel that you're mine—to make you more mine than you've ever been. I wish I had a hundred arms. I would hold you with them all, and never let you go."

"But, dearest, one would think I wanted to go. Do you really believe if I had my own way, I should be anywhere but here with you?"

"No.—I don't know.—How should I know?"

"Doubts?—beloved!"