'He will make those who want you draw lots with numbers, then call a halt when he decides that you are tired.'
'Have men queue up for me!' Mary gasped. 'I won't! I won't!'
'Nonsense, child. I have had neophytes through my hands before who felt as you do now. Faced with the prospect of taking several lovers instead of one, they make the same protests as you are doing. But, when the time comes, their scruples vanish. After the feast they become eager to be loved and the sight of others throwing off all restraint sets them at their ease.'
'I can't! I couldn't!' Mary cried. 'There are some repulsive men among them to whom I'd never give myself. Never! Never!'
'Never is a long time,' Honorius smiled. 'After a while you will come to set much more store on the pleasure a man can give you than on his features, the shape of his limbs or the colour of his skin. But if you have a prejudice against the ageing or pot-bellied I will tell Abaddon, and he will arrange matters so that only well-formed men embrace you tonight.'
Quivering with fear and fury, Mary retorted; 'No one shall embrace me! I'll not submit to this! Get out of here to hell where you belong! I'm going home!'
With both hands she thrust down the sheets, and drew up a leg to spring out of bed; but Honorius was too quick for her. Ignoring her movement, the Priestess shot out a hand, seized her by the nose and forced her head back. As Mary gasped for breath, Honorius shot the contents of the glass into her open mouth. She choked and swallowed. A little of the liquid ran down her chin, but as her head hit the pillow, nearly all of it went down her throat.
'That's better,' Honorius murmured. 'And now I'm going to send you to sleep for half an hour. You will feel quite a different girl when you wake up.'
'Let me go!' Mary gurgled, endeavouring to spit out the little of the liquid that remained in her mouth, and thrusting her hands up against the Priestess's shoulders.
Honorius did let go of Mary's nose, but dropped the glass, seized both her wrists, broke her hold, and forced her hands down on to her chest.
As Mary's breath returned, she panted, 'You bitch! Get off me! Let me go or I'll kill you,' and she began to struggle violently. But the tall Priestess was a powerful woman and had the advantage that she had thrown the upper part of her body on top of Mary and was pressing her down.
In vain Mary jerked up her knees and strove to free herself. She could not wrench her wrists from the firm hold upon them and the weight of the Priestess crushed her against the well-sprung mattress of the bed. Meanwhile, Honorius's face was only a few inches above her own and the big grey eyes in it held hers with a steady gaze.
As Mary stared back the eyes seemed to grow even bigger. Then the Priestess said in a soft voice, 'Sleep. My will is stronger than yours and you must obey me. I order you to sleep.'
Realizing that she was being hypnotized, Mary tried to shut her eyes; but it was too late. She found she could not lower her eyelids, or look away from those great grey orbs that bored down into hers. Honorius's weight was forcing the breath out of her lungs and she knew that her strength was ebbing. The eyes grew larger until the Priestess's face became a blur, then disappeared, leaving only the two huge eyes, now seeming the size of saucers, poised above Mary's face. She could still taste the potion she had been given. It was bitter-sweet, like vermouth, only as strong as a liqueur. Its flavour was the last thing she remembered before she faded into unconsciousness.
When she came to, she was alone. A delightful warmth pervaded her whole body, the feel of the lawn sheets between which she lay seemed like a caress on her bare skin, and she was more conscious than she had been before of the delicious scent that Honorius had put on her in preparation for Mr. X's visit. The drug had stimulated all her senses, and with the lazy sensuousness of a cat she snuggled down in the big bed to doze again for a few minutes.
Gradually, all that had happened came back to her, but she felt no impulse to jump out of bed, hurry into her clothes and attempt to escape. A comforting fatalism now dominated her mind. She had succeeded, or very nearly succeeded, in the task she had set herself. Provided she could continue to remain unsuspected as a spy, in the long run she would get the best of these people who had trapped her. Teddy's shoes linked his murder with Ratnadatta and it didn't much matter that she had failed to bring about his arrest tonight, as she had planned. It would be equally satisfying to witness it tomorrow.
To achieve this she had, after all, to pay the price she had been prepared to pay to start with. In fact, it now transpired to be a much higher price than she had bargained for. But Honorius had been right in contending that it was not beyond her means to pay it. Some of the men she could not have borne, but Honorius had promised to see to it that she was not asked to do so, and the Priestess had been so completely frank about everything that there was no reason to suppose that she had not meant what she said.
And, after all, during a passionate embrace one man was very like another; so would she really mind that, instead of being made love to by one man all through the night, she was to be the partner of several? An episode from her black year in Dublin came back to her. Some young men had come to the club intent on throwing a wild party. When the club closed, two of them had carried her off to a flat belonging to one of them. There they had played strip-tease poker until all three of them had forfeited most of their clothes. Laughing and fooling, one of them had then carried her into the bedroom and put out the light. A few minutes later the other had joined them, and as she had had a lot to drink she hadn't really minded.
The two young men had been friends of Barney's. The thought of him made her wonder what he was doing at that moment. Her immediate guess was that he was at some quiet country hotel in bed with an attractive woman - some easy light-of-love for whom he had so callously let her down. Then she remembered that it was not yet ten o'clock. More probably they were still sitting in the lounge over coffee and liqueurs talking trivialities but mentally savouring in advance the delights of the night to come. He would be smiling into her eyes, entertaining her with some gay nonsense and grinning that devastating grin of his.
What a fool she had been on the point of making herself about him. As though a man with a nature like his could ever really change. Yet he had persuaded her that he had. In her heart she knew that she had forgiven him for the past. If he had asked her to go away with him for the weekend she would have. And she would have told herself that it was to carry out her plan to be avenged on him. Up to the last moment she would have toyed with the idea of telling him the truth about what he had done to her, then leaving him flat. But she wouldn't have done it. Instead, she would have let him make love to her again. She knew that she wouldn't have been able to help herself, because she would have wanted him, and wanted him more than any man she had ever known.
But that was not going to happen now. Once again he had unfurled his true colours. That would give her the strength to resist any future temptation to become his plaything. She was not going to let him break her heart.
