Only too willingly she would have made a break for it with him, but she knew that she could not. She knew without further experiment that she was still under the hypnotic command of her kidnapper, and that during his pleasure she was definitely chained to the house.

'I can't,' she said. 'It is not possible. I've got to stay.'

His brown eyes suddenly hardened. 'There's no question of you're having got to. You mean you want to.'

'No, no!' She cried in extreme agitation. 'It's not that. But I'm more or less safe here; and you are not. For God's sake stop arguing and go!'

'You are the mistress of this American, aren't you?' He shot at her.

'Of course I am,' she snapped back. 'Does he look like a village curate or an inmate of an old folk's home?'

'I guessed as much during supper, when he kept on calling you "honey",' Barney declared bitterly.

'Oh, God help me!' Mary wailed 'What does it matter! Open that window. Get out and run for it while you still have the chance.'

'And leave you here, eh?' For what now seemed weeks to Barney his mind had been obsessed with the one idea of getting her out of the clutches of the Satanists, at whose hands he had imagined her to be suffering every kind of distress and degradation. No matter what she might have done in the past, it was the woman he had come to know and love during the past two months that counted. And now he had come upon her as beautiful as ever, untroubled by fears and displaying a cheerful affection for this giant American Colonel. Her frank admission that she had become the man's mistress was the last straw. Final disillusion caused his eyes to go black with anger and he added furiously,

'All right then! Stay here if you want to! Stay and wallow with that great hog! Once a whore always a whore; and now I know why you became one.'

Mary's eyes went as round as marbles; her mouth fell open; she gave a gasp. 'What . . . what the hell d'you mean?'

'What I say,' he snapped. 'Your name's not Margot but Mary. I know all about you and the life you led before you married.

When he said 'all' she thought he meant all. Never in her wildest dreams had she visualized a dénouement like this. She had believed that she knew all about his past while he knew nothing of hers. But now the cat was out of the bag. Hands on hips, her blue eyes shooting sparks, she let him have it.