Yet if such shame could be, I still would have had no fear, for I should have shot you as wolves are shot that come too near the fold." He looked at her piercingly, and the pupils of his eyes narrowed to a pin-point.

"You would have shot me--you are armed ?" he questioned.
"Am I the only woman that has armed herself against you and such as you?
Do you not see ?" "Mi Duvel, but I do see now with a thousand eyes!" he said hoarsely.
His senses were reeling.

Down beneath everything had been the thought that, as he had prevailed with other women, he could prevail with her; that she would come to him in the end.

He had felt, but he had declined to see, the significance of her bearing, of her dress, of her speech, of her present mode of life, of its comparative luxury, its social distinction of a kind which lifted her above even the Gorgios by whom she was surrounded.

A fatuous belief in himself and in his personal powers had deluded him.