'What do you want?' she asked curtly and desperately. 'I've got nothing to give you—no more money, no more power, no more influence. I've got nothing.' Her voice shook for a moment as she sketched her worldly position.
A pause followed. Beaufort Chance longed to make the plunge, and yet he feared it. If he told her that she still had what he wanted, he believed that he could bend her to his will; to try at least was the strong impulse in him. But how much would it mean? He was fast in the Fricker net. Yet the very passions which had led him into that entanglement urged him now to break loose, to follow his desire, and to risk everything for it. The tyrannous instinct that Connie had so cleverly played upon would find a far finer satisfaction if the woman he had once wooed when she was exalted, when she gave a favour by listening and could bestow distinction by her consent, should bend before him and come to him in humble submission, owning him her refuge, owing him everything, in abject obedience. That was the picture which wrought upon his mind and appealed to his nature. He saw nothing unlikely in its realisation, if once he resolved to aim at that. What other refuge had she? And had she not liked him once? She would have liked him more, he told himself, and been true to him, if he had taken a proper tone towards her and assumed a proper mastery—as he had with Connie Fricker; in a passing thought he thanked Connie for teaching him the lesson, and took comfort from the thought. Connie would not be really troublesome; he could manage her too.
'No, you've got nothing,' he said at last; 'but supposing I say I don't mind that?'
Trix looked at him again, and suddenly began to laugh hysterically. The idea he hinted was horrible, but to her it was inexpressibly ludicrous too. She saw what he wanted, what he had the madness to suggest. She was terrified, but she laughed; she knew that her mirth would rouse his fury, but it was not to be resisted. She thought that she would go on laughing, even if he struck her on the face—an event which, for the second time in their acquaintance, did not seem to her unlikely.
'Are you—can you actually——?' she gasped.
'Don't be a fool! There's nothing to laugh at. Hold your tongue and think it over. Remember, I don't bind myself. I'll see how you behave. I'm not going to be fooled by you twice. You ought to know it doesn't pay you to do it too, by now.' He became more jocular. 'You'd have better fun with me than with Mervyn, and I daresay you'll manage to wheedle me into giving you a good deal of your own way after all.'
He was still more outrageous than Trix had thought him before. She was prepared for much, but hardly for this. He had degenerated even from what he had shown himself in their earlier intercourse. Outwardly, among men, in public life, she supposed that he was still presentable, was still reckoned a gentleman. Allowing for the fact that many men were gentlemen in dealing with other men, or appeared such, who failed to preserve even the appearance with women, she remained amazed at the coarse vulgarity of his words and tone. It is possible that his attentions to Connie Fricker had resulted in a deterioration of his style of treating such matters; or the change may merely have been part of the general lowering the man had undergone.
'Well, I'll be off now,' he said, lifting himself from the table leisurely. 'You think about it. I'll come and see you again.' He held out his hand. 'You're looking deuced pretty to-day,' he told her. 'Pale and interesting, and all that, you know. I say, if we do it, old Mervyn'll look pretty blue, eh? The laugh'll be against him then, won't it?'
Trix had not given him her hand. She was afraid of the parting. Her fears were not groundless. He laughed as he stepped up to her chair. She drew back in horror, guessing his purpose. It would seem to him quite natural to kiss her—she divined that. She had no leisure to judge or to condemn his standard; she knew only that she loathed the idea passionately. She covered her face with her hands.
'Guessed it, did you?' he laughed, rather pleased, and, bending over, he took hold of her wrists and tore her hands from in front of her face.