"'Did you ask that question of me? Am I to understand you want to break your fetters?'
"She plucked a rose from her breast and crumpled it to atoms between her hands.
"'O why are they not golden ones!' she asked. 'I am miserable because we must be poor; because—because I want to ride in a carriage, because I want to wear jewels and own a dozen servants, and trample on the pride of women plainer than myself. I hate your humble home, I hate your stiff Dutch kitchen, I hate your sordid ways and the decent respectability that is all you can offer me. Were you beautiful as Adonis, it would make no difference. I was born to drink wine and not water, and I shall never forgive you for forcing me to take your crystal goblet in my hands, while, if I had waited—'
"She stopped, panting. I let my whole pent-up jealousy out in a word.
"'Edwin Urquhart has not even a crystal goblet to offer you. He is poorer than I am, and will remain so till he has actually married Miss Dudleigh.'
"'Don't I know it!' she flashed out. 'If it had been otherwise do you think—'
"She had the grace or the wisdom to falter. I regret it now. I regret that she did not go on and reveal her whole soul to me in one fell burst of feeling. As it was, I trembled with jealousy and passion, but I did not cast her from me.
"'Then you acknowledge—' I cried.
"But she would acknowledge nothing. 'I love no one,' she asserted, 'no one. I want what I want, but none of you can give it to me.'
"Then blame me as you will, I took a great resolve. I determined to give her what she craved; convinced of her sordid nature, convinced of her heartlessness and the folly of ever thinking she could even understand, much less reciprocate my passion, I was so much under her sway at that moment that I would have flung at her feet kingdoms had I possessed them. Flushing, I seized her hand.