She could not say it; even to purchase her freedom from the home she hated, she could not bring herself to declare a love she did not feel. Indeed, at the moment, she believed she hated Potter, hated his mother for her interference.... She was distracted.
“You refuse to marry me?” she demanded.
“I’ll come for you to-morrow. I’ll ask your father for you, and if he won’t give you to me I’ll break in and take you ... if you love me.”
“That’s your final word?” Her voice was sharp, metallic.
He nodded miserably.
She did not speak again until they stood upon the piazza of her own house and she was about to open the door. Suddenly she turned on him, blazing with white fury. “You coward!” she said, hoarsely. “You quitter.... You contemptible quitter.... Oh, how I despise you!”
It seemed as if she could not contain herself. Suddenly she lifted her little hand and struck him across the mouth; then, sobbing with rage, she snatched open the door and disappeared within.
Potter stood rigid, livid.... For a minute, two minutes, he remained without motion; then slowly, very slowly, he turned away from the door and made his way to his motor.
CHAPTER XI
Potter Waite’s outlook upon life had been modified by his accident and by that period of enforced reflection which followed it; it was again modified by the occurrences of the night when he had first helped Hildegarde von Essen to escape from her home and then had compelled her to return to it. His first emotion had been one of seething rage; this was succeeded by a bitter feeling that he had been cheated, and he brooded. He had been cheated because he had given his love to Hildegarde and received in return for it a blow and her scorn. He did not stop to think. He did not consider that she was headstrong, impetuous as himself; he did not consider the suddenness, perhaps the untimeliness, of the proffer of his love. He did not comprehend that Hildegarde’s words and actions were the result of black disappointment; that her anger with him was to have been expected of a girl such as she, frustrated by him in a design which she believed to be vital. Instead of weighing and reflecting he plunged into a sinister mood.