“Which?”
“The wicked one, where you refuse my Rajah.”
David hesitated.
“You are no gentleman, sir, if you refuse a lady. Give it me this instant,” cried Lucy, so haughtily and imperiously that David did not know her, and gave her the letter with a half-cowed air.
She took it, and with both her supple white hands tore it with insulting precision exactly in half. “There, sir and there, sir” (exactly in four); “and there” (in eight, with malicious exactness); “and there”; and, though it seemed impossible to effect another separation, yet the taper fingers and a resolute will reduced it to tiny bits. She then made a gesture to throw them in the fire, but thought better of it and held them.
David looked on, almost amused at this zealous demolition of a thing he could so easily replace. He said, part sadly, part doggedly, part apologetically, “I can write another.”
“But you will not. Oh, Mr. Dodd, don't you see?!”
He looked up at her eagerly. To his surprise, her haughty eagle look had gone, and she seemed a pitying goddess, all tenderness and benignity; only her mantling, burning cheek showed her to be woman.
She faltered, in answer to his wild, eager look. “Was I ever so rude before? What right have I to tear your letter unless I—”
The characteristic full stop, and, above all, the heaving bosom, the melting eye, and the red cheek, were enough even for poor simple David. Heaven seemed to open on him. His burning kisses fell on the sweet hands that had torn his death-warrant. No resistance. She blushed higher, but smiled. His powerful arm curled round her. She looked a little scared, but not much. He kissed her sweet cheek: the blush spread to her very forehead at that, but no resistance. As the winged and rapid bird, if her feathers be but touched with a speck of bird-lime, loses all power of flight, so it seemed as if that one kiss, the first a stranger had ever pressed on Lucy's virgin cheek, paralyzed her eel-like and evasive powers; under it her whole supple frame seemed to yield as David drew her closer and closer to him, till she hid her forehead and wet eyelashes on his shoulder, and murmured: