He gazed at her with a sudden sense of fear. Almost her courage overmastered his will. There was something austere and angelic in that slight figure with the rosy waves of vapour playing about it and turning its azure draperies to royal purple, and for the first time he wondered whether there was not something deliberately brutal in his treatment of her. Rallying his self-possession he answered:
“When we are outside this place you can take it, if you will——”
“Why not inside?” she asked. “Here, where the vapours of your witches’ cauldron simmer and steam—where I can feel your melting fires pricking every vein and nerve!” and she stretched out her arms towards the Wheel of strange opalescent light which now revolved almost at a snail’s pace. “Make short work of me, Dr. Dimitrius!—this is the place for it!”
On a sudden impulse he sprang to her side and seized her hand.
“Diana! You think me a pitiless murderer!”
She looked straight into his eyes.
“No, I don’t. I think you simply a man without any feeling except for yourself and your own aims. There are thousands,—aye, millions of your sex like you,—you are not extraordinary.”
“If I succeed you will have cause to thank me——”
“Possibly!” she answered, with a slight smile. “But you know gratitude sometimes takes curious and unexpected forms! One of the commonest is hatred of the person who has done you a kindness! Come, give me that fire-drop,—it is restless in its prison! We are fighting a strange duel, you and I—you are all for self, and your own ultimate triumph—I am selfless, having nothing to lose or to win——”
“Nothing?” he repeated. “Foolish woman!—you cannot foresee—you cannot project yourself into the future. Suppose I gave you youth?—suppose with youth I gave you beauty?—Would you then call me selfish?”