CHAPTER ONE
'No,' said Sally-Anne McAllister dazedly.
'No, please, no,' and she struggled fiercely against the arms which held her -- a man's, she noted, and that was enough to start her struggling even harder.
She would not be held by a man ever again.
No, not at all, and then, even in her confused state, her mind shied away from the reasons for her distaste, and she found herself saying even through her pain and shock, 'I will not think about that, I will not,' and so saying she stopped struggling and sank back into oblivion once more .
The next time she returned to consciousness she discovered that the whole right side of her face was numb, and that was all she registered.
The memory of being held in a man's hard arms had disappeared.
Her eyes opened; she was on her back.
Above her she saw a ceiling, grey and white, a plaster rose from which depended a gas-light inside a glass globe, engraved with roses.
She heard voices which at first made little sense, could not, for the moment, think where she might be or even who she was.
'Mama,' she said, her voice a thread, speech strangely difficult.
'She's coming round at last.'
It was a man's voice, educated, a pleasant if cold baritone.
An earlier memory returned.
Was he the man who had held her?
She did not want him to hold her again.
She tried to sit up, but was pushed gently back, by a woman's hand this time.
'Oh, dear God, Dr Neil.
Thanks be to Him she's conscious again.
I thought she would never recover,' said a woman's voice this time.
'The second blow was a cruel one.'
'Stupid,' said the man's cold voice.
'It was stupid of her to try to intervene between Jem Higgins and his Poll.'
Sally-Anne opened her eyes, tried to sit up -- a mistake that, everything reeled around her again; but memory had returned and she knew why she was in this room...and even why she had reached there, but not how.
And how dared the man standing between herself and the light so that she could not see him clearly speak so harshly of what she had done?
It might indeed be stupid to try to stop a man from attacking a helpless woman...but...
'Someone,' she announced, her voice suddenly strong again, 'someone has to try to prevent poor women from being beaten by great strong brutes.'
'Oh, yes,' said the man drily, 'I could not agree with you more.
But not young girls who could barely defend themselves against a schoolboy, let alone the professional bruiser Jem Higgins once was.
How came you here, anyway?'
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