She looked up at me pleadingly, quiveringly, with clasped hands.
“I don’t want to do—to do anything else. Oh, Frank, I hope you won’t make me!”
It was not this unexpected collapse that made me tremble; it was not this confession; it was the knowledge that I had her in my power. She had seemed so far above me—ever since I knew her; she had seemed so far beyond me, so strong, so aloof, so ice pure, so inflexibly and inaccessibly right! And now she was ready to come to me if I insisted on taking her.
But the hungry beast in me was not yet satisfied with her avowals.
“Could I, Regina—could I—make you?”
I once saw in the eyes of a spaniel that knew it was going to be shot the beseeching, submissive, helpless look I saw here.
“You know what I’ve been doing, Frank—the last two years—just to be where I—where I could—hear about you—occasionally—and see you perhaps—when you couldn’t see me.”
I bent down toward her, close, closer, till I almost enveloped her.
“Yes, I know that—now—and—and I’m—I’m going to make you.”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t withdraw. Perhaps she crept nearer me. Certainly she shivered.