"Oh, yes," she said frankly, "I understand. If I stood in your shoes I should feel as you do and be just as brutal in my desire for revenge. But put yourself in mine for a minute. You can if you will. You have imagination. The mere fact that you've been in my room for an hour and made me undergo the worst sort of humiliation before my maid and my companion ought to be sufficient to heal any ordinary type of vanity, however severe the wound. Come, now. I don't ask you to be fair. I don't deserve that. But be big and get off that awfully high horse. What d'you say? Shall I cry quits?" She held out her hand with the charming smile which had never failed since the time when she was the little queen of her big nursery.
Franklin compelled himself to ignore it. "No," he said. "I'm here to make you feel the spurs for the first time in your life, and I shall stay."
In a flash Beatrix changed back to the personality behind which she hid her best and undiscovered self. She threw back her head and squared her shoulders and brought her exquisite slim young body into an attitude of audacious challenge and ran her eyes over Franklin with an expression in which there was contempt and amusement.
"Then you may make up your mind to a long and arduous job," she said. "It'll take a better man than you to break me in."
"We'll see about that," he said.
She burst into a derisive laugh. Her blood was up. This man had frightened her, amused her, interested her. He had won her admiration, even a little of her sympathy. Now he bored her. He had stayed too long, harped on one subject too steadily. She might consent to play at something else, but this game was threadbare. She refused to entertain the possibility of his attempting to carry out his threat beyond taking possession of her room, which, in itself, was impertinent enough.
"What precisely do you imagine that you can do?" she asked, with the very essence of scorn.
Franklin's patience had almost run out, too. "I don't imagine that I can do anything. I know exactly what I'm going to do."
"Is that so? Do tell me."
"Conform in detail to the right you've given me," he said, "without any further argument."