'It was all a ruse!'
'A ruse?'
'Yes!' he cried with a sudden outburst of rage, long enough held in check. 'Yes! A ruse to find out if you loved me still!'
Then, as instinctively, at sight of his face, which had become distorted with fury, she stepped back in order to avoid closer contact with him, he jumped up from his chair, and while she continued to retreat, he followed her step by step, and she watched him, fascinated and appalled by the look of deathly hatred which gleamed in his eyes.
'A year ago, Jacqueline,' he went on, speaking now through set teeth, so that his voice came to her like the hissing of an angry snake; 'a year—nay, a month, a week ago—if I had told you that I was going away from you, you would have thrown yourself in my arms in the agony of your grief; you would have wept torrents of tears and wrung your hands and yielded your sweet face, your full, red lips unasked to my caresses. But now——'
He paused. She could retreat no further, for her back was against the wall. Instinctively she put out her arms in order to keep him off. But he suddenly seized her with a fury so fierce that she could have screamed with the pain, which seemed literally to break her back in two. He held her close to him, his warm breath scorched her face, his lips sought her throat, her cheeks, her eyes, with a violence of passion so intense that for the moment she felt weak and helpless in his arms. Only for a moment, however. The next, she had recovered that dignified calm which was so characteristic of her quaint personality. She made no resistance, because of a truth she had not the power to shake herself free from his embrace; but her figure suddenly became absolutely rigid, and once or twice he met a look in her eyes which was so laden with contempt, that his exasperation gave itself vent in a long, impassioned tirade, wherein he poured forth the full venom of the pent-up rage, hatred, jealousy which was seething in his heart.
'You! Miserable Flemish cinder-wench!' he cried. 'So you thought that you could toy with the passion of a Spanish gentleman? You thought that you could use him and play with him for just as long as it suited your fancy, and that you could cast him aside like a torn shoe as soon as some one richer, greater, more important, appeared upon the scene. Well! let me tell you this, my fine Madame! That I'll not give you up! I'll not! No! Though I do not love you, any more than I do any slut who tosses me a passing kiss. But I'll not give you up—to that accursed stranger, or to any man; do you hear? You are mine, and I'll keep you—you and your fortune. I have reckoned on it and I want it—and I'll have it, if I have to drag you in the gutter first, or burn this confounded city about your ears!'
His voice had gradually grown more and more husky, until the last words came out of his parched throat like the screech of some wild animal gloating over its prey. But in his present state of health, the effort and the excitement proved too great for his endurance. He turned suddenly dizzy and sick, staggered and would have fallen headlong at her feet, if she herself had not supported him.
She had remained perfectly still while he poured forth that hideous torrent of insults and vituperation, which, in her sight, were akin to the writhings of some venomous reptile. She could not move or stop her ears from hearing, because he held her fast. Tall, stately and impassive, she had stood her ground like some unapproachable goddess whom the ravings of a raging cur could not in any way pollute.
Now that he became momentarily helpless, she gave him the support of her arm and led him quietly back to the chair. When he was once more seated and in a fair way of recovering from this semi-swoon, she—still quite calmly—turned to go.