animal," he told her rather brutally. "There is nothing spiritual about
me. I live for what I can get. When I get the chance I gorge. If I have a
soul at all, it is so rudimentary as to be unworthy of mention."

In the silence that followed he looked at her again with grim
comprehension. "P'r'aps you don't care for animals," he suggested
cynically. "To change the subject, do you know we are leaving the
hunt behind?"

She reined in somewhat reluctantly. "I suppose we had better go back."

"If your majesty decrees," said Nap.

He pulled the mare round and stood motionless, waiting for her to pass.
He sat arrogantly at his ease. She could not fail to note that his
horsemanship was magnificent. The mare stood royally as though she bore
a king. The man's very insignificance of bulk seemed to make him the
more superb.

"Will you deign to lead the way?" he said.

And Anne passed him with a vague sense of uneasiness that almost
amounted to foreboding. For it seemed to her as if for those few moments
he had imposed his will upon hers, had without effort overthrown all
barriers of conventional reserve, and had made her acknowledge in him
the mastery of man.

Rejoining the hunt, she made her first deliberate attempt to avoid him,
an attempt that was so far successful that for the next hour she saw
nothing of him beyond casual glimpses. She did not join her husband, for