"You're very nearly right," she smiled.
"You're a fool, you're a fool!" he stormed, "you don't know what's coming to you. You don't know."
"Perhaps I do," she said. "Perhaps I can guess. But whatever is coming to me, as you put it, I prefer that to marrying you."
He started back as though she had struck him across the face, and he turned livid.
"You won't say that when——"
He checked himself and without another word left the room, and she heard his heavy feet blundering down the stairs.
And then she met him again. It was two nights after. She met him in a horrible dream. She dreamt he was flying after her, that they were both birds, she a pigeon and he a hawk; and as she made her last desperate struggle to escape, she heard his hateful voice in her ear:
"Maisie, Maisie, it is your last chance, your last chance!"
She had gone to bed at ten o'clock that night, and it seemed that she had hardly fallen asleep before the vision came. She struggled to sit up in bed, she tried to speak, but a big hand was over her mouth.
Then it was true, it was no dream. He was in the room, his hand upon her mouth, his voice in her ear. The room was in darkness. There was no sound save the sound of his heavy breathing and his voice.