Gently, he endeavoured to release himself. “Not my woman spy,” he corrected her. “Remember you came to me and I employed you on behalf of the North Star Company—for J.C.X.”
“For the North Star—for J.C.X.!” She echoed it derisively. “What is the North Star to me? Do you think I would work as I have done; run risks of reputation, even life itself at times, for this J.C.X., a man I have never seen?”
“But haven’t we treated you fairly?” he argued. “Isn’t your salary next only to that of the president himself? Hasn’t the North Star done everything within reason to reward you and show its appreciation of your services? What—what more is it you could ask, girl?”
“You—your love!”
She whispered it softly with a quick intaking of breath, her eyes opening momentarily in a quick, melting flash under his.
Acey Smith pushed her from him impatiently, almost roughly. His face became cold and hard, unutterably cruel for an instant. Then that wisp of a devil-sneer flickered on his handsome, ruthless features.
“My love!” And he laughed a laugh that was not pleasant to hear. “What foolishness put it into your head that I could love, Yvonne?”
His scorning tones bit the woman to the quick. Her dark eyes flashed dangerously. “It was her! It was her!” she flamed at him. “That baby-faced thing down on Amethyst Island. I thought until she came you were what you seemed to be—a beautiful, pale devil. And as a devil I worshipped you, silently and in secret, fondly believing I nor any other woman could claim you. I thought you were more than human—a being of destiny to whom all passions and weaknesses were scornful trivialities. Then—then she came—and I saw the change in you.
“Listen,” she cried, her face chalk-white from the pent-up emotions surging within her. “Alexander, the thing which that thought awakens within me I tell you makes me mad—mad! You may never be mine, but you never, never shall be hers. I will kill—”
“Don’t say that!”