“Well, I’m not going below, anyway.”
She sat down firmly and Quarrington regarded her a moment in silence.
“You baby!” he said at last in an amused voice.
And the next moment she felt herself picked up as easily as though she were in very truth the baby he had called her and carried swiftly down the few steps into the cabin. The recollection of that day of her accident in the fog, when he had carried her from the wrenched and twisted car into his own house, rushed over her. Now, as then, she could feel the strength of his arms clasped about her, the masterful purpose of the man that bore her whither he wished regardless of whether she wanted to go or not.
He laid her down on the bunk and, bending over her, kept his hands on her shoulders.
“Now,” he demanded, “are you going to stay there?”
A faint rebellion still stirred within her.
“Supposing I say ‘no’!”—irresolutely.
“I’m not supposing anything so unlikely,” he assured her. “I’m merely waiting to hear you say ‘yes.’”
She recognised the utter futility of trying to pit her will against the indomitable will of the man beside her.