'I apologise for coming, but I am frightened. The storm is dreadful. So I came to you, Isolde.'
Isolde put out her arms with a sobbing cry.
'I am frightened, too,' she said with a swift resentful glance at her husband; 'I was coming for you. Stay with me, Valerie; I will not be left alone!'
Sagan looked from one to the other of the two beautiful faces, and a sensation of surprised dismay, to which he was a stranger, arose in his mind. Hitherto women had been to him possessions, not problems. Now a very ancient truth burst in upon him with all the force of a revelation. To own a woman is not always to understand her. The unexpected defiance on his wife's face confounded him.
'Isolde!' he began, stepping towards her.
But the young Countess clung to Valerie.
'Stay with me, Valerie!' she implored. 'I am far more frightened than you, for I know what there is to fear.'
With a loud curse of bewilderment he strode out, banging the door behind him. Isolde sprang to it, slipping the bolts with trembling fingers. Then she threw herself upon a couch and broke into pitiful sobbing.
Valerie stood looking down at her in an agony of suspense, yet remembering that self-control is the chief rule of every game. Presently she put her hand on Isolde's shoulder. The young Countess started up with a suppressed scream. 'I had forgotten you were there. Valerie, he will murder me! He hates me! Oh, I have no one to save me!'
Valerie looked round. After the scene she had just witnessed, this suggestion did not sound so wild as it would have done at another time.