"There is magic in the third time of asking," came a breathed, just audible whisper. "Yet, be warned; call not to you that which you may neither hold nor forbid."
"But I do call—if that will make you speak to me," I returned, my pulses tingling triumph. "Although, as to not holding you——"
"You fancy you hold me? It is not you who are master of this moment, but I who am its mistress."
Her voice had gained in strength; a soft voice, yet not weak, used with a delicate deliberation that gave her speech the effect of being a caprice of her own rather than a result of my compulsion. Yet, I thought, she must be crouched or kneeling beside me, on the floor, held like the Lady of the Beautiful Tresses.
"Still, I doubt if you have the disposition to use your advantage," I began.
"You mean, the cruelty," she corrected me.
"I am from New York," I smiled. "Let me say, the nerve. If you pressed that knife, I might bleed to death, you know."
"Would you hear a story of a woman of my house, and her anger, before you doubt too far?"
"Tell me," I consented; and smiled in the darkness at the transparent plan to distract my attention from that imprisoned braid.
She was silent for so long that I fancied the plan abandoned, perhaps for lack of a tale to tell. Then her voice leaped suddenly out of the blackness that closed us in, speaking always in muted tones, but with a strange, impassioned urgency and force that startled like a cry. The words hurried upon one another like breaking surf.