“You have plenty of character,” he said, staring; at her.
“You don’t think so. Do you?”
“Why not?”
“Because of what I said to you on the roof-garden that night. It was shameful, wasn’t it?”
“You behaved like many a thoroughbred,” he returned bluntly; “you were scared, bewildered, ready to bolt to any shelter offered.”
“It’s quite true I didn’t know what to do to keep alive. And that was all that interested me—to keep on living—having lost my soul and being afraid to die and find myself in hell with Erlik.”
He said: “Isn’t that absurd notion out of your head yet?”
“I don’t know ... I can’t suddenly believe myself safe after all those years. It is not easy to root out what was planted in childhood and what grew to be part of one during the tender and formative period.... You can’t understand, Mr. Cleves—you can’t ever feel or visualise what became my daily life in a region which was half paradise and half hell——”
She bent her head and took her face between her fingers, and sat so, brooding.
After a little while: “Well,” he said, “there’s only one way to manage this affair—if you are willing, Miss Norne.”