Niall had listened to this with his head bent, frowning a little. He looked up now, raising his face until he was looking high over Clare's head, and she saw something like exultation gleam in his eyes and lighten the harsh lines of his face.
“Yes,” he said softly, and drew in his breath. “Yes, she believes in it. Ah, the wonder of that swift comprehension of a child. She has carried over something from the age of magic. That is the thing I saw in her. There was something. Something that brought her, too, to Brackenbine. It was not just curiosity. I felt it wasn't. I gambled on that, and I won! I felt that remnant of the ancient understanding in her. Did I not tell you that the craftsman must feel the willingness of his material? He must know by a subtle sense what he can shape and what he can't. Ah, if only my perceptions were more perfect! Had I the nose for the right kind of blood that Grim, there, has, I should succeed every time. I had no doubts about Jennifer and there was no resistance in her blood. There is such sweet satisfaction when the material and the artificer's hand are so harmoniously intent on the purpose! If you could have seen with what glad obedience she offered her ear to the awl and shed the droplet of life!”
Clare kept her eyes on him with a mounting fear and agony in her heart.
“Oh Niall, don't play with me!” she begged. “I'm deadly serious. Ah yes, it was a delightful game between you and me. I loved your make−believe. But this has gone too far. It's not safe. It's not right. It's—it's not a game any more. You must think what she is. She doesn't exist just in this room, just at the times you see her, at night. She's a schoolgirl; she belongs to Paston Hall, she's got friends, teachers, a sister, a mother and father. She may be quite a different girl to them, you see: just an ordinary young schoolgirl with all the ordinary faults and limitations of her age that every girl has and that you are forgetting about just because you see something in her that attracts you as an artist—that suits your particular game....”
Niall suddenly jerked himself away from the fireplace, strode into the middle of the room and wheeled about.
“Game? Game?” he exclaimed with a sharp impatience. “That's three or four times you've said it. Is it a game?”
Clare stood up. She had gone chalk−white at his new tone, and she trembled uncontrollably. “Isn't it?” she whispered.
He moved back to her, staring straight into her wide, fixed grey eyes.
“Have I played a game with you?” he asked. “Have I pretended to love you?”
His intent stare bore down her eyes. The weakness of will and body she knew so well was assailing her again. But she struggled still to cling to the truth and break the meshes of pretence.
“I didn't think so,” she said unhappily. “I thought you loved me sincerely. But now I don't know.”
With his hands on her shoulders he forced her to sit down once more, and, bending above her he spoke with ardour, but with no tenderness in his voice.
“It is not pretence. I love you. But it is love after my fashion, and that's something deeper and stronger and more enduring than anything you have ever known, than anything you could ever know from any other man. These are not fine phrases: they're words that tell the fact. The reason I love you is that you, alone among the girls I've known, can understand such words. Ah!” his exclamation was angry. “Admit without more ado that it's you who're pretending, taking cover behind your daylight, book−fed reason to hide from your own understanding. Does your heart, does your understanding by night deny the power I have over you? Does this?”
He shot out his hand and seized the lobe of her left ear between his thumb and finger, pinching it brutally. She would have cried out with pain, but no utterance came, only a weak gasp. She could neither move nor speak; the waves of pain flowed through her entire body, seeming to lift her helplessly on their surges, and after a time she ceased even to feel the unrelenting pressure as a pain; it was more a force that coursed through her, spreading busily and brutally into every corner of her body, establishing his domination over every parcel of her being. In the first second she might have fought against the invader, but the power he sent in was too strong and too quick, she was subjugated before the first physical pain could rouse her to battle.
It was a long time before he released her. She had shut her eyes, and when at last the waves began to ebb she thought she must have fainted for a moment or two, for she found herself on her knees in front of him, weakly holding to his legs to support herself, for forehead pressed against his knees. She wanted to rise, but with his hand on her head he prevented her; his hand lay lightly, but it was enough: she no longer had any power of her own. Her mind only was active, and, after the temporary obliteration of every thought and every image from her brain while the waves surged through her, she found a clean simplicity of understanding. The darkness was purged of its terrors as the world may be purged by a great storm, and she saw the whole complex of Niall's powers and his purpose leached and exposed in coherent, comprehensible order: comprehensible in his own terms but irreconcilably alien to all other experience by which she might have judged his purpose.
The things she had feared were all his creatures and her sole protection, she understood, was in the source of the fear itself. She clung to Niall because he was all the authority and the refuge there was in this new, storm−washed, inhuman world. He was at once the evil and the exorcist; from his hand came both pain and healing; he destroyed and he gave life. She trembled and waited.
He spoke after a time, very calmly, and she sighed with relief to catch a faint tinge of tenderness, or at least friendliness in his voice again.
“You see, you do admit my power. I knew you understood too well to rebel, though there were still some few shreds of wilfulness from the ephemeral world trammelling your true comprehension. I'm sorry. But fear nothing more. Put fear quite out of your heart. There will be neither pain nor fear, nor anything else but joy once the material work is done. And until then, if you will only obey me, you shall live in utter tranquillity, and when the moment comes you shall enter the trees immune from all pain and harm, guarded by a shining circle. You shall dream the days away until then and the nights shall be all a soft delight.”
He spoke slowly, and Clare felt each word dropping into the empty, wave−purged world of her mind and peopling it again, bringing colour and life, populating it with images that lived, though they were his creations. She found her voice again, and asked submissively:
“Will it be long?”
His hand travelled from her head down to the nape of her neck and he caressed her there, stroking her with a strong firm touch.
“A few days!” he said, and she heard the triumph and joy in his voice. He continued stroking her for a few moments, then raised her gently and seated her in the chair again. She sat where he had placed her, like an invalid. The great weakness was still upon her, but she had stopped trembling. Niall moved away and went lightly about the room, laughing, talking, as brisk and gay as she had ever known him. He collected up the small parts of the puppets he had been working on and put them away in one of the presses which he opened with a key from his pocket and locked again. The working drawings he threw on to the top shelf of the cupboard Clare had looked into.
Then, when he had tidied up, as casually and genially as he had ever done before, he remarked that he would make some tea, and began to bustle about, raking glowing embers under the iron stand on which he boiled the studio kettle, getting out tea−pot and cups and saucers from a cupboard in the corner. Clare saw that his confidence in his mastery was complete; nor could she resent it or rebel against it; she had submitted and there was a curious peace now in being entirely his—the peace of conformity, of joining the company of all who had submitted to him, Anne and Janet and Margaret Raines. Yet, though she felt no more anguish, though she knew that he could protect her from everything she feared, when the picture of Margaret Raines came into her mind she felt two tears trickle down her cheeks.