He came nearer still and she shrank, like a terrified dumb thing, against her magnificent dressing-table, with its load of priceless trinkets. She tried to call out, but her voice seemed gone, and he only laughed as he laid his hand over her mouth and drew her gently towards him. With a sudden unnatural strength she wrested herself from his arms.
“Oh! listen to me, listen to me for one moment first,” she begged frantically. “It’s true that I married you, but it was all a plot—and I was a child! You shall have your share of my money! Leave me alone and I swear it! You shall be rich! You can go back to Paris and be an adventurer no longer. You shall spend your own money. You can live your own life!”
Even then her brain moved quickly. She dared not speak of Annette, for fear of making him desperate. It was his cupidity to which she appealed.
“I am no wife of yours,” she moaned. “You shall have more money than you ever had before in your life. But don’t make me kill myself! For I shall, if you touch me!”
He was so close to her now that his hot breath scorched her cheek.
“Is it that another has taken my place?” he asked.
“Yes!—no! that is, there is some one whom I love,” she cried. “Listen! You know what you can do with money in Paris. Anything! Everything!”
He was so close to her now that the words died away upon her lips.
“Little wife,” he whispered, “don’t you understand—that I am a man, and that it is you I want?”