Once, when he had been sitting very still in the further corner, thinking she was asleep, she had looked at him suddenly, and had found his eyes fixed on her in a gaze so concentrated, so full of intense longing, that she felt as if he were trying to hypnotise her into loving him.

She knew that if he were, it must be unconscious hypnotism on his part.

There were no subtleties of that kind in Colin McKeith.

No, it was the primal element in him that appealed to her, dominated her.

For she was startled by a sudden realization of that dominant quality in him as applied to herself.