“What is the sort of service you offer me?” she cried.
He did not answer. Irresistibly impassioned, he seized her fiercely in his arms. The woman had gone out and for the moment they were alone.
“Betty, you shall come! I will try to be fair with you. If you have fought against this, so have I.”
“Hush, hush!” she cried pitifully. “Oh! think of him there!”
“He offered you to me for a price. I curse myself for telling you this now; but I must have you by fair means or foul.”
She fell against him, weeping heavily, while he held her.
“Oh, for shame!” she gasped, “that I should be put up to be bid for in my innocence! What brutes are men!”
“I won’t gainsay you. But, Betty, am I to live on in my warm house and know her cold and hungry that all my soul longs to?”
“Don’t!—oh, don’t talk to me like that!”
“Give me your lips, wench. Come! I will have them. By this and this, Betty, through every fibre of your sweetness I love and claim you.”