“Enough of this farce,” she shouted. “I have told you that I will not stay with you and I mean it. Turn back or put me ashore in France. If you don’t – I swear I will fling myself overboard.”

He looked at her for a moment, laughing gently, and then he reached out and took her in his arms.

She struggled against him, fighting with all her strength, but to no avail.

Slowly and inexorably he pulled her close to him, drawing her closer, closer, until, although she twisted and turned her head desperately, his strong fingers pulled her face up to his.

She felt a shudder of revulsion and horror pass through her as his hot greedy mouth captured hers and held it captive.

She felt once again as if she was being suffocated, as she had felt when the blanket was thrown over her head. His kiss nauseated her and yet she could not be free of him.

He was too strong.

He held her crushed to him, kissing her until she felt that she must swoon away from the very horror of it.

He drew her nearer still, held her with one arm as if in a vice, his free hand caressing her neck and her bare shoulders, pulling at the laces at her breast, until she cried out, struggling frantically against him.

Then, as she heard her gown tear, she freed herself from him by an almost frenzied effort.

She ran from him to the other side of the cabin. She went behind the couch and pushed it forward so that it stood between them.

She stood there, her breath coming sobbingly from between her lips.

“So unspoilt, so inexperienced!” he grinned. “What a pleasure to teach you what love means!”

“How can you – defame the word?” she panted. “This is not – love. This is lust. This is all that I have ever heard of – beastliness – horror and – d-defilement.”

She was crying as she spoke with both anger and fear.

Then she realised suddenly that her defiance was exciting him. She knew it by the glint in his eyes, the smile on his lips and the way his fingers moved a little as if he was holding her and touching her again.

“Let me go! Let me go!” she screamed in sudden terror. “You cannot – do this to me. You – cannot!”

“So small, so helpless, so very ineffectual,” he smirked in his silky voice.

And then he started across the cabin towards her.

She knew then that he was stalking her, stalking her as he had tried to do that first night at Stade Hall. The huntsman after his prey, a thrill with the chase and conscious all the time that for the fleeing animal there was no escape.

She stood trembling behind the couch, holding onto the back of it and then moving a little, first to the right and then to the left as he advanced.