‘What might that be, Jack?’ she asked interestedly.

‘Your violation, my dear!’ I replied quietly, looking her straight in the face, ‘the surrender to me of your maidenhead!’

She started as if she had been struck. She coloured hotly. She stared at me as if she doubted her hearing. I stood still and calmly watched her. Then indignation and the sense of outraged modesty seized her.

‘You must be mad to speak like that!’ she said in a voice that trembled with concentrated anger. ‘You forget yourself. Be good enough to consider our friendship as suspended till you have recovered your senses and have suitably apologised for this intolerable insult. Meanwhile I will trouble you only to call a cab so that I may remove myself from your hateful presence!’ And her eyes flashed in her wrathful indignation.

I quietly laughed aloud: ‘Do you really think I should have taken this step without calculating the consequences, Alice?’ I rejoined coolly. ‘Do you really think I have lost my senses? Is there not a little account to be settled between us for what you did to me not very long ago? The day of reckoning has come, my dear; you have had your innings at my cost, now I am going to have mine at yours! You amused yourself with my heart, I am going to amuse myself with your body.’

Alice stared at me, silent with surprise and horror! My quiet determined manner staggered her. She paled when I referred to the past, and she flushed painfully as I indicated what her immediate future would be. After a slight pause I spoke again.

‘I have deliberately planned this revenge! I took these rooms solely because they would lend themselves so admirably to this end. I have prepared them for every contingency, even to having to subjugate you by force! Look!’ And I proceeded to reveal to her astonished eyes the mechanism concealed in the furniture, etc. ‘You know you cannot get out of this room till I choose to let you go; you know that your screams and cries for help will not be heard. You now must decide what you will do. I give you two alternatives, and two only, and you must choose one of them. Will you submit yourself quietly to me, or do you prefer to be forced?’