“Yes,” she acknowledged. “I’m afraid I have been blind, Geoffrey. Indeed—indeed I would have prevented all this if I had known, if I had guessed. But, honestly, I just thought of you—you and Judith—as friends.”
“I believe you really did,” he said slowly, almost incredulously. Then, as though in swift corollary: “Jean, is there anyone else?”
The question drove at her with its sudden grasp of the truth. Her face grew slowly drawn and pinched-looking beneath his merciless gaze and her lips moved speechlessly.
“So it is that, is it? And does he—has he——”
“Geoffrey, you are insufferable!” The words came wrung from her in quick, low protest. “You have no right—no right——”
“No, I suppose I haven’t,” he admitted, touched by the stricken look in her eyes. “I’d no business to ask that. For the moment, it’s enough that you don’t love me.... But I shall never give you up, Jean. You’re mine—my woman!” The light of possession flared up once more in his eyes. “Do you remember I told you once that, if a man makes up his mind, he can get his own way over most things? Well, it’s true.”
He paused a moment, then abruptly swung round on his heel and without a word of farwell, strode away across the garden towards the gate by which he had entered.
As the latch clicked into its place behind him, Jean was conscious of a sudden tremor, of a curious, uncontrollable fear, as though his words held something of prophecy. The man’s dominating personality seemed to swamp her, overwhelming her by its sheer physical force.
The remembrance of her sinister dream, and of the dream Burke’s threat: “It’s too late to try and run away. If you don’t come into my parlour, you’ll be stamped with the mark of the beast forever,” returned to her with a disagreeable sense of menace. She shivered a little and, picking up her basket, almost ran back to the house, as though seeking safety.