IT was over. A bare twenty yards from the brow of the bill the man had won, and now the mare was standing swaying between the shafts, shaking in every limb, her flanks heaving and the sweat streaming off her sodden coat in little rivulets.

Burke was beside her, patting her down and talking to her in a little intimate fashion much as though he were soothing a frightened child.

“You’re all in, aren’t you, old thing?” he murmured sympathetically. Then he glanced up at Jean, who was still sitting in the cart, feeling rather as though the end of the world had occurred and, in some surprising fashion, left her still cumbering the earth.

“She’s pretty well run herself out,” he remarked. “We shan’t have any more trouble going home”—smiling briefly. “I hope not,” answered Jean a trifle flatly.

“You all right?”

She nodded.

“Yes, thank you. You must be an excellent whip,” she added. “I thought the mare would never stop.”

Probably even Jean hardly realised the fineness of the horsemanship of which she had just been a witness—the judgment and coolness Burke had evinced in letting the mare spend the first freshness of her strength before he essayed to check her mad pace; the dexterity with which he had somehow contrived to keep her straight; and finally, the consummate skill with which, that last half-mile, he had played her mouth, rejecting the dead pull on the reins—the instinctive error of the mediocre driver—which so quickly numbs sensation and neutralises every effort to bring a runaway to a standstill.

“Yes. I rather thought our number was up,” agreed Burke absently. He was passing his hands feelingly over the mare to see if she were all right, and suddenly, with a sharp exclamation, he lifted one of her feet from the ground and examined it.

“Cast a shoe and torn her foot rather badly,” he announced. “I’m afraid we shall have to stop at the next village and get her shod. It’s not a mile further on. You and I can have tea at the inn while she’s at the blacksmith’s.”

With a final caress of the steaming chestnut neck, he came back to the side of the cart, reins in hand.

“Can you drive her with a torn foot?” queried Jean.

“Oh, yes. We’ll have to go carefully down this hill, though. There are such a confounded lot of loose stones about.”

He climbed into the dog-cart and very soon they had reached the village, where the chestnut, tired and subdued, was turned over to the blacksmith’s ministrations while Burke and Jean made their way to the inn.

Tea was brought to them upstairs in a quaint, old-fashioned parlour fragrant of bygone times. Oaken beams, black with age, supported the ceiling, and on the high chimneypiece pewter dishes gleamed like silver, while at either end an amazingly hideous spotted dog, in genuine old Staffordshire, surveyed the scene with a satisfied smirk. Through the leaded diamond panes of the window was visible a glimpse of the Moor.

“What an enchanting place!” commented Jean, as, tea over, she made a tour of inspection, pausing at last in front of the window.

Burke had been watching her as she wandered about the room, his expression moody and dissatisfied.

“It’s a famous resort for honeymooners,” he answered. “Do you think”—enquiringly—“it would be a good place in which to spend a honeymoon?”

“That depends,” replied Jean cautiously. “If the people were fond of the country, and the Moor, and so on—yes. But they might prefer something less remote from the world.”

“Would you?”

“I?”—with detachment. “I’m not contemplating a honeymoon.”

Suddenly Burke crossed the room to her side.

“We might as well settle that point now,” he said quietly. “Jean, when will you marry me?”

She looked at him indignantly.

“I’ve answered that question before. It isn’t fair of you to reopen the matter here—and now.”

“No,” he agreed. “It isn’t fair. In fact, I’m not sure that it isn’t rather a caddish thing for me to do, seeing that you can’t get away from me just now. But all’s fair in love and war. And it’s both love and war between us two”—grimly.

“The two things don’t sound very compatible,” fenced Jean.

“It’s only war till you give in—till you promise to marry me. Then”—a smouldering light glowed in his eyes—“then I’ll show you what loves means.”

She shook her head.

“I’m afraid,” she said, attempting to speak coolly, “that it means war indefinitely then, Geoffrey. I can give you no different answer.”

“You shall!” he exclaimed violently. “I tell you, Jean, it’s useless your refusing me. I won’t take no. I want you for my wife—and, by God, I’m going to have you!”

She drew away from him a little, backing into the embrasure of the window. The look in his eyes frightened her.

“Whether I will or no?” she asked, still endeavouring to speak lightly. “My feelings in the matter don’t appear to concern you at all.”

“I’d rather you came willingly—but, if you won’t, I swear I’ll marry you, willing or unwilling!”

He was standing close to her now, staring down at her with sombre, passion-lit eyes, and instinctively she made a movement as though to elude him and slip back again into the room. In the same instant his arms went round her and she was prisoned in a grip from which she was powerless to escape.

“Don’t struggle,” he said, as she strove impotently to release herself. “I could hold you from now till doomsday without an effort.”

There was a curious thrill in his voice, the triumphant, arrogant leap of possession. He held her pressed against him, and she could feel his chest heave with his labouring breath.

“You’re mine—mine! My woman—meant for me from the beginning of the world—and do you think I’ll give you up?... Give you up? I tell you, if you were another man’s wife I’d take you away from him! You’re mine—every inch of you, body and soul. And I want you. Oh, my God, how I want you!”

“Let me go... Geoffrey...”

The words struggled from her lips. For answer his arms tightened round her, crushing her savagely, and she felt his kisses burning, scorching her face, his mouth on hers till it seemed as though he were draining her very soul.

When at last he released her, she leant helplessly against the woodwork of the window, panting and shaken. Her face was white as a magnolia petal and her eyes dark-rimmed with purple shadow.

A faint expression of compunction crossed Burke’s face.

“I suppose—I shall never be forgiven now,” he muttered roughly.

With an effort Jean forced her tongue to answer him.

“No,” she said in a voice out of which every particle of feeling seemed to have departed. “You will never be forgiven.”

A look of deviltry came into his eyes. He crossed the room and, locking the door, dropped the key into his pocket.

“I think,” he remarked coolly, “in that case, I’d better keep you a prisoner here till you have promised to marry me. It’s you I want. Your forgiveness can come after. I’ll see to............