She clung to his hand with desperate pleading and pressed close to him:
"But you won't send me away?"
She could feel him trembling.
He hesitated, and then against the warning of conscience, reason, judgment and every instinct of law and self-preservation, he spoke the words that cost so much:
"No—I—I—won't send you away!"
With a sob of gratitude her head sank, the hot lips touched his hand, a rustle of silk and she was gone.
And through every hour of the long night, maddened by the consciousness of her physical nearness—he imagined at times he could hear her breathing in the next room—he lay awake and fought the Beast for the mastery of life.