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86 BLACK SHEEP.will never swerve or falter — the passion yvhichwill blot out from your knowledge or your fearseverythingbeyonditself."Weak, imaginative, without principle, easilyruled by strength, though a despot to yveakness,the yvomanhe addressed listened to him like onein a dream. Not until afterwards did a sense ofbeing tricked and trapped come to her. Had herdemeanour towards Routh really implied all this?Had she yielded to the rapacity for admiration,to the thirst for conquest,which had ahvays dominatedin her nature, once too often, and far toocompletely? This was precisely what she haddone, and she hacl fallen into the hands of astronger being than herself. In a blind vague,groping kind of way she felt this, and felt thatshe could not help or deliver herself, and felt ityvith somethinglike fear, evenyvhile her imaginationand her vanity yvere intoxicated by the minglingof defiance and pleading in his words, in histones, and inhis looks."You and I," he went on, "would say toothers, would say to each other in some of ourmoods, or would have said when first wemet, that