“You are jesting, Mr. Bombs.”
She broke off and rested her head on both hands. The old weariness had come again, and more! Even the multiplicity of his adjectives affected her. They tired her to death just as his Pyro-shows used to do—with their flash after flash.
“You are the same and yet you are not the same,” she added, arousing herself and turning away from his glittering gaze with a gesture of despair. “O why did you come back to torment my life?”
He came swiftly to her side and whispered in her ear—whispered, although he might have spoken aloud; for there was no one in the room and no sleeping Adam anywhere among the shrubberies “I came to fulfill my promise to your father and claim you for my wife.”
She started from him as though bitten by a serpent, or rather as though she had been mistaken for the original Eve and a real serpent had been whispering in her ear.
“Your wife!” Her face turned surface-red as though scorched with outside flame. “Your wife,” she repeated, “and the elected burden-bearer of your secret, sinful knowledge! I have never thought of being your wife and never could be or should be, and father would not have insisted.”
“Adelaide! Adelaide! You don’t know what you are saying. You will feel differently after everything is proven and you have time to think it over.”
“Never! Mr. Bombs, never! I shall never think differently. Leave me! Go out of my sight forever!”
“Adelaide! Is it possible! Whatever I have been to others I have always been honest with you.”
“Honest? Yes! You tell me of your black and sinful deeds, then try to make them look sinless and white. Leave me at once. Your presence is more than I can endure.”