"It won't be many days before we find scandal rearing its head at us."
"Impossible," said Beatrix, quietly.
"Why?"
"Simply because it is. I'm going to play that part and I'm going to look very nice in the clothes. Also, I'm looking forward to a great deal of fun with the matinée idol, shaved or unshaved."
Franklin whipped round upon her. "It isn't for you to say what you'll do or not do. For your sake, as well as for mine, I must take charge of this business, and you'll please carry out my orders."
"Orders!" She threw up her head. "That's a word that isn't and never will be contained in my dictionary."
"You're wrong. I've just added it to that volume," he said.
Beatrix gave a big laugh and stood up to him with her chin tilted, her eyes dancing and a look of triumph all over her lovely face. "Take charge—you!" she cried. "Think again. The whip is in my hand now and I shall use it. You dare not give me away. You're afraid of the laughter that will follow you wherever you go. I think you're right. But,—as to being your wife, not in this world, my good sir, for any reason that you can name. I'd rather die."
And then she turned on her heel and swung away, with the roses seeming to bend towards her as she went.
Franklin watched her, with his hands clenched and his mouth set. "By God," he said to himself, "we'll see about that!" And he would have added more angry words, thickly, to his mental outburst, if a new feeling,—bewildering, painful, intoxicating,—had not welled up to his heart. All round him, as he stood there in amazement, the air seemed to be filled with the song of birds. Then it came to him,—the answer to the question he had put to himself impatiently and jealously in his apartment in New York after Malcolm Fraser's little story. "I'm going to begin to live—I've met the woman who can make me give up freedom and peace of mind, take me to Heaven or draw me down into Hell!"