“I love you too!” Yamina whispered. “But it is hopeless – crazy – impossible! As far as you are concerned something that is totally and completely – forbidden.”

“That is for me to decide.”

“You must be sensible.”

“Is this sensible?” he asked almost savagely.

He kissed her forehead, her eyes, her cheeks and then, as she wanted him to kiss her lips more than she had ever wanted anything before in her life, his mouth was on hers!

He kissed her slowly, deliberately and she felt as if he was more masterful and more possessive than he had been before.

It was as if he demanded from her not only her heart but also her soul, as if he wanted her to surrender her very thoughts so that she no longer had any identity of her own.

This was love – this was life – and an ecstasy like a brilliant light.

*

It was a long time later before they drew apart and Yamina, feeling curiously weak about the knees, sat down in one of the armchairs.

Her eyes were shining, her face was radiant and Lord Castleford knew that he had never seen a woman look so ecstatically happy.

Then, as if she deliberately dragged herself back from the heights of bliss, she said,

“You would be the first to say that we must not be – slaves to our – emotions – that we have to – consider what we are – doing.”

She drew in her breath as she added,

“Tomorrow we shall arrive in Athens. I have to – leave you and to be more – in love than I am at the moment will make it an – agony I cannot – contemplate.”

“Then why think about it?” Lord Castleford asked.

“Because it is something – we have to face.”

“Let tomorrow take care of itself,” he said. “We have today and tonight and somehow, when tomorrow comes, I will find a solution to our problems.”

“Can you?” Yamina asked.

“I have no idea until I think about it,” he answered. “At the moment I only want to think about you.”

He gave her a smile as he said,

“I thought I was immune to love. I told Lord Stratford only two days ago that I would never be in the maudlin state where a man can no longer think clearly, when he believes the world is well lost for the sensations evoked in him that could not be anything but transient.”

“Is that what you feel – about us?” Yamina enquired.

“You know as well as I do that this is nothing that could be described as either maudlin or transient. It is something that has been there waiting for us since the beginning of time.”

“Do you really – believe that?”

“I have lived too long in the East not to believe in Kismet or Fate,” Lord Castleford replied, “and you, my precious, are my Fate!”

There was a little twist to his lips as he said,