That was a rubbing of it in with a vengeance. Had the effect of making him speak with a strange quiver in his voice.
"Please—please get up! I don't like—I can't bear—to see you——"
Her disobedience was of the studied kind. She got so close to him that he felt the warmth of her body, the up-creep of her hands on his breast, the sweet warm breath from her lips. So holding him—holding in every sense of the word—she said with a spice of defiance in her voice:
"I won't get up till you tell me you forgive me everything!"
She had him at such a disadvantage! It was really grossly unfair. The poor wretch did not know whether he was on his head or his heels. Then, almost before he knew what he was doing, his arms were about her; he could not help it. He gripped her to him so closely that she could have cried out—but it was too sweet a pain to ask relief from.
"Tell me." His voice was raucous in its hoarseness. "You do not—do not belong to Chantrelle?"
A laugh came to her lips. A tinge of jealousy in the man she loves pleases a woman, spices things as it were. Besides, looked at from the right view-point, it is the subtlest of flattery.
Hence her laughter.