A pair of soft, electric palms took his, and the current of the hidden woman's presence flowed through every vein in his body.
Rex stood immovable as if a secret shock had fixed his feet. He cried out with an inarticulate exclamation because he knew the touch, but his paralyzed vocal organs would frame no speech. A short, dramatic silence succeeded his outcry. The drone of a clumsy, waking fly beat distinctly on the panes; the creak of oar-locks on the river rose insistently through the open conservatory windows; beneath the sills the gentle plashing of the fountain water changed to a gurgle of wicked glee.
In the silence, Britton was beginning to find his self-possession, when the sorceress spoke, her voice now undisguised.
"It's centuries and ages since we were so close, Rex," she said–and the magnetic hands were glued to his in a melting, appealing touch. "Isn't it ages and ages?" she continued passionately.
Britten's answer was a cry like that of a trapped bear. He wrenched his hands loose, swept away the intervening curtains, as he once swept the silken portières from an old-time boudoir, and stood face to face with the siren it had held. She had taken off her veiled turban, and her eyes shone like stars, with a former potent lure.
CHAPTER XVIII.
Everything whizzed about Britton for a few seconds. In the red glow of light from the demolished pavilion, the floor throbbed and rocked like the deck of a yacht, and the glass walls of the conservatory tilted up sharply. Rex put a hand on the wire which had held the curtains and steadied himself.
"So it was design," he said harshly, accusingly.
One glance at his face told Maud Morris that honeyed words could not subjugate him. Appeal was rendered useless for her purpose; there remained compulsion. She stepped back a little at his grim anger till she leaned against some flowering vine in the corner window-box. Between them stood a small table on which rested the adjuncts of her pretended art.
"Yes," she corroborated, with a flicker of satire, "it was design. You know, Rex, that I have no faith whatever in coincidence. You believed me to be thousands of miles away in Dawson City?"