There was another silence and her hands went groping to her throat. It had been no chance affair then—no accidental meeting that the Suna chief had turned to his own account, but an organised outrage that had been carefully planned from the beginning. From the very outset she had been a dupe. She ground her teeth with rage. Her suave, subservient guide had been leading her the whole time, not in the direction that had been mapped out in Iwagakure, but towards the man who had bought him to betray his trust. Akatsuchi shifting eyes, his desire to hurry her from the oasis where they had rested at mid-day, his tone were all explained. He had acted well. The last touch—the imaginary wound that had toppled him slowly out of his saddle had been a masterpiece, she reflected bitterly. Nothing had been omitted to make the attempt a success. The horse that had been given her to ride was the Chief's beyond all doubt, trained to his whistle. Even her revolver had been tampered with. She had not missed, as she had thought. She remembered the noise, the fleeting vision she had had in the hotel at Iwagakure. It had been some one in her room, Akatsuchi himself, or one of his men, who had stolen in and substituted the blank cartridges. The possibility of Kiba changing his mind and accompanying her must also have been thought of, for the Chief had provided against the resistance that would certainly have then been made by the number of followers he had brought with him—a large enough force to frustrate easily any attempted opposition to the attack.
The net that she had felt closing round her earlier in the afternoon seemed wrapped round her now inextricably, drawing tighter and tighter, smothering her. She gasped for breath. The sinking sun seemed suddenly to leap up wildly into the heavens; then she pulled herself together with a tremendous effort. "Why have you done this?" she murmured faintly.
Then for a moment her heart stood still, her eyes dilating. He had come close behind her, and she waited in an agony, until he caught her to him, crushing her against him, forcing her head back on his arm.
"Because I wanted you. Because one day in Iwagakure, four weeks ago, I saw you for a few moments, long enough to know that I wanted you. And what I want I take. You played into my hands. You arranged a tour in the desert. The rest was easy."
Her eyes were shut, the long dark lashes quivering on her pale cheeks so that she could not see his face, but she felt him draw her closer to him and then his fierce kisses on her mouth. She struggled frantically, but she was helpless, and he laughed softly as he kissed her lips, her hair, her eyes passionately. He stood quite still, but she felt the heavy beating of his heart under her cheek, and understood dimly the passion that she had aroused in him. She had experienced his tremendous strength. She realised from what he had told her that he recognised no law beyond his own wishes, and was prepared to go to any lengths to fulfil them. She knew that her life was in his hands, that he could break her with his lean brown fingers like a toy is broken, and all at once she felt pitifully weak and frightened. She was utterly in his power and at his mercy—the mercy of a Suna who was merciless.
She gave in suddenly, lying quiet in his arms. She had touched the lowest depths of degradation; he could do nothing more to her than he had done. For the moment she could fight no further, she was worn out and utterly weary. A numb feeling of despair came over her and with it a sense of unreality, as if it were a hideous nightmare from which she would wake, for the truth seemed too impossible, the setting too theatrical. The man himself was a mystery. She could not reconcile him and the barbaric display in which he lived with the evidences of refinement and education that the well-worn books in the tent evinced. The fastidious ordering of his appointments puzzled her; it was strange to find in such a place. A dozen incongruities that she had noticed during the day crowded into her recollection until her head reeled. She turned from them wearily; she was too tired to think, too spent in mind and body. And with the despair a kind of indifference stole over her. She had suffered so much that nothing more mattered.
The strong arms around her tightened slowly. "Look at me," he said in the soft slow voice that seemed habitual to him, and which contrasted oddly with the neat, clipping tongue that he spoke. She shivered and her dark lashes flickered for a moment. "Look at me." His voice was just as slow, just as soft, but into it had crept an inflection that was unmistakable.