"And if I ...?" she began.
He sat upright and caught her two wrists in his right hand.
"If you say 'no'? You won't; you can't! You'll want me by then, want someone you can depend on. And, if you don't, you'll have to take me just the same. You won't be able to say 'no.'"
His voice had grown low, and he spoke with clear deliberation. I once watched a neurotic woman being put to sleep by a hypnotist. O'Rane's low, determined tone reminded me of the doctor's suggestive insistence. "Now you are going to sleep. You are, oh! so tired. Your eyes are so heavy. So heavy! So sleepy!..." Her voice in answering dropped to the same key.
"You think anyone could make me obey him? Try it, friend David!"
"Five years will make a difference. I haven't given many orders, Sonia, but they've always been obeyed. I haven't done very much—yet, but I've never failed to do what I wanted." Sonia tried to be defiant, but her eyes suddenly fell, and she slipped down from the arm of the chair and moved towards the door.
"Ah! you're an infant prodigy," she observed jauntily. "I must go to bed, though."
"Sonia, come back here!"
O'Rane had not raised his voice, but Sonia paused in her passage across the room. In her place I should have done the same.
"What do you want?" she asked uneasily.