It was very alluring, but there was duty frowning upon her yielding senses. "Please don't let that smoke drift into my face," said she crossly. "It's choking me."
He flung away the cigarette. "Beg pardon," he muttered, between anger and humility. "Thought you didn't mind smoking."
She was ashamed of herself, and grew still angrier. "If you'd only think about some one beside yourself once in a while," said she. "You quite wear people out, with your everlasting thinking and talking about yourself."
"You'd better stop that midnight reading," flared he. "Your temper is going to the devil."
She rose with great dignity; with an expression that seemed to send him tumbling and her soaring she went into the house.
In some moods he would have lain where he fell for quite a while. But his mood of delight in her charms as a woman had completely eclipsed his deference for her charms as a lady. He hesitated only a second, then followed her, overtook her at the entrance to her room. She, hearing him coming, did not face about and put him back in his place with one haughty look. Instead, she in impulsive, most ill-timed panic, quickened her step. When the woman flees, the man, if there be any manhood in him, pursues. He caught her, held her fast.
"Let me go!" she cried, not with the compelling force of offended dignity, but with the hysterical ineffectiveness of terror. "You are rough. You hurt."
He laughed, turned her about in his arms until she was facing him. "The odor of those pines, out there," he said, "makes me drunk, and the odor of your hair makes me insane." And he was kissing her—those fierce, strong caresses that at once repelled and compelled her.
"I hate you!" she panted. "I hate you!"
"Oh, no, you don't," retorted he. "That isn't what's in your eyes." And he held her so tightly that she was almost crying out with pain.