"I'll do anything for you in return--anything you like to ask! Only do this one thing for me! He may have escaped the tide.

If so, he'll try the quicksand, and he don't know the lie of it! Rufus, you wouldn't want--your worst enemy--to die like that!" She broke off, wildly sobbing, yet still clinging to him in agonised entreaty.

The man's face, with its crude ferocity, the untamed glitter of its fiery eyes, was still bent to hers, but she no longer shrank from it.

The power that moved her was too immense to be swayed by lesser things.

His attitude no longer affected her, one way or another.