Suddenly I felt myself seized in a pair of powerful arms. A face came against my own, and lips were pressed hard upon mine.
I screamed like one gone mad. I fought for my freedom from his arms like a possessed person. Then blindly, with blood and fire before my eyes and burning in my heart, I fled from that terrible chamber. I think I banged both my head and hands against the door, for later I found that my forehead and hands were swollen and bruised. Out into the street I rushed.
I heard Verley Marchmont call to me. I saw him like a blur rise up in my path, but behind him I fancied was that other—that great animal who had kissed me.
On and on I ran, my first impulse being to escape from something dreadful that was pursuing me. I remember I had both my hands over my mouth. I felt that it was unclean, and that rivers and rivers could not wash away that stain that was on me.
I think it was Marchmont's jerking hold upon my arm that brought me to a sense of partial awakening.
"Miss Ascough, what is the matter? What is the matter?" he was saying.
I looked up at him, and I started to speak, to tell him what had happened to me, and then suddenly I knew it was something I could tell no one. It loomed up in my child's imagination as something filthy.
"I can't tell you," I said.
"Did something frighten you? What is it, dear?"
I remember, in all my pain and excitement, that he called me "dear," that fair-haired young Englishman; and like a child unexpectedly comforted, it brought the sobs stranglingly to my throat.