“Find you! Yes, I’d trouble enough. I’ve been looking for you for months. I might have known you’d come to London.”
“You might,” she said, with a tired kind of contempt. “But London’s a big place.”
“Yes. I shouldn’t have found you even now, if I hadn’t seen a likeness of you in one of the shop windows.”
“Ah, yes! I see!” she said, shutting her lips tight. “And now you’ve found me you want money, I suppose?”
“Of course,” he assented, roughly.
“And suppose I don’t choose to give it to you?” she demanded.
“Then,” he began, but he stopped as she sprang to her feet and looked down at him with her black eyes flashing angrily.
“Look you here, Seth!” she said, slowly, and between her white, even teeth. “You know me by this time, and you know whether you can frighten or bully me. You tried it once, and you know the result! I’d rather die”—she caught up one of the knives and flung it down again with a gesture of defiance—“than be the slave of any man, least of all of you!”
He took a bunch of hothouse grapes from the plate, and picked them off one by one, keeping his small, dark eyes fixed on her watchfully.
“I’d rather die!” she repeated. “If you think because I’m up in the world you’re going to live on the money I risk my life for, you’re mistaken. I’m not afraid of you, Seth; I’m not afraid of any man living——”