She trembled, terrified, and her face became distorted with tears. "You are cruel and unjust," she sobbed. "I will not bear it."
He dropped her arm, and paced backwards and forwards among the furniture. Then he stopped by the table and picked up a book--the daintily bound little volume that had come for Rafella this morning. He looked at it with contempt.
"This is the kind of unwholesome rot he tries to poison your mind with." He opened the cover, and read the verse on the fly-leaf; next moment he flung the book to the farther end of the room.
"That is enough," he said. "Listen to me! If you don't promise me this instant never to speak to the man again, I'll--I'll kill you."
Coventry was beside himself with passion, for it seemed to him that his honour, his home, his name was besmirched. He felt humiliated, wronged; and the primitive sense of outraged possession had him in its grip. Nothing could ever be the same again between his wife and himself. It was all he could do not to strike her as she stood there, white, and fair, and weak, at his mercy, yet still with a frightened defiance in her childish blue eyes.
There followed a tense pause, as with set teeth he strove to master his passion, holding his clenched hands down on the table before him.... And suddenly the silence outside was broken by the sound of wheels and the sharp trotting of a horse's hoofs that turned into the adjoining compound and ceased. Instinctively Rafella turned her head and listened. Mr. Kennard had come home from the ball. The knowledge that he was at hand gave her a feeling of partial security. That, together with indignation and resentment, kept her firm in her resolve not to be browbeaten into a promise that could only be an admission of guilt. She could not perceive that morally she had erred, though actually she was innocent of wrongdoing. It was precisely what her husband could not perceive either; to him there was little difference.
"Are you going to promise?" he asked, with menace in his voice.
She put up her hands as though to shield herself from violence.
"Are you going to promise?" he said again, and moved a little nearer.
Then her courage failed her. She was afraid of George, afraid of the look on his face that reminded her of a savage animal--afraid of his threats, and his voice, and his presence. She turned and ran to the door that had been bolted by him as they entered. He followed her. She screamed, stretching her white arms up to the bolt, dragging it down.