"And if I say I will not?"
He looked at her sternly.
"Then I will tell the story to my mother and you shall hear your dismissal from her lips. Choose!"
She dropped into a chair, and made a gesture of scorn.
"Tell whom you please," she said. "I am your affianced wife, my people are under your roof at this moment; go to them and tell them that you have deserted me for a low-born girl!"
He turned and strode to the door; but ere he had reached it the reaction had come. With a low cry, she flew to him and sank at his feet, her hands clasped on his arm, her face upturned with an awful imploration.
"Leycester, Leycester! Do not leave me! Do not go! Leycester, I was wrong, wicked, base, vile; but it was all for you—for you! Leycester, listen to me! You will not go! Do not fling me from you! Look at me, Leycester!"
He did look at her, lovely in her abandon and despair, and then averted his eyes; it horrified him to see her so low and degraded.
"You will not look at me!" she wailed; "you will not! Oh, Heaven! am I so changed? am I old, ugly, hideous? Leycester, you have called me beautiful a hundred—a thousand times; and now you will not look at me! You will leave me! You shall not; I will hold you like this forever—forever! Ah!"—for he had made a movement to disengage himself—"you will not hurt me! Yes; kill me, kill me here at your feet! I would rather die so than live without you. I cannot, Leycester! Listen, I love you; I love you twenty thousand times better than that wretched girl can do! Leycester, I will give my life for you! See, I am kneeling here at your feet! You will not spurn me, you cannot repel me! Leycester! oh, my darling, my love! do what you will with me, but do not spurn me! Oh, my love, my love!"
It was piteous, it was awful, to see and hear her, and the strong man trembled and turned pale, but his heart was stone and ice toward her; the white, wan face of his darling came between them, and made the flushed, passion-distorted face at his feet seem hideous and repellant.