“I don’t choose to be discussed by you,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter whether you choose or not,” he replied, “that doesn’t alter the fact that you are ready to fall down and kiss the feet of that little insect. And I don’t want to prevent you—do it, fall down and kiss his feet. But I want to know, what it is that fascinates you—what is it?”
She was silent, suffused with black rage.
“How dare you come brow-beating me,” she cried, “how dare you, you little squire, you bully. What right have you over me, do you think?”
His face was white and gleaming, she knew by the light in his eyes that she was in his power—the wolf. And because she was in his power, she hated him with a power that she wondered did not kill him. In her will she killed him as he stood, effaced him.
“It is not a question of right,” said Gerald, sitting down on a chair. She watched the change in his body. She saw his clenched, mechanical body moving there like an obsession. Her hatred of him was tinged with fatal contempt.
“It’s not a question of my right over you—though I have some right, remember. I want to know, I only want to know what it is that subjugates you to that little scum of a sculptor downstairs, what it is that brings you down like a humble maggot, in worship of him. I want to know what you creep after.”
She stood over against the window, listening. Then she turned round.
“Do you?” she said, in her most easy, most cutting voice. “Do you want to know what it is in him? It’s because he has some understanding of a woman, because he is not stupid. That’s why it is.”
A queer, sinister, animal-like smile came over Gerald’s face.