He carried her without words to the kitchen and set her down there in the leathern arm-chair. She had a glimpse of his face as he did so, and it was as it had been earlier in the day—a mask of anger.
He did not speak to her, but went to a cupboard in the wall and took therefrom a bottle and a glass. Weak and trembling from her fall, she watched him pour out a small dose of spirit and add thereto water from a jug on the dresser. Then he came back to her, stooped and put it to her lips. His arm was behind her head as she drank. She felt the strong support of it, the compulsion of the hand that held the glass. But she could not raise her eyes to his. She drank in mute submission.
The dose steadied her, and she sat up. His silence oppressed her like a crushing weight. She felt it must be broken at all costs.
“I am so sorry to have given you this trouble,” she said. “You will think me very strange, but I am afraid I can’t explain anything. I will go back to my room.”
He set down the glass with decision and spoke. “I am sorry to appear unreasonable—or anything else unpleasant. But I am afraid I can’t let you go back to your room at present.”
She turned and gazed at him. “What on earth do you mean?”
His look came to her, and his anger seemed to smite her as with physical force. “My reasons—like yours—won’t bear explanation,” he said.
She gripped the arms of her chair. Had she heard him aright? The thing was unbelievable. “Are you mad?” she said.
He was standing squarely in front of her. He smiled—a smile that turned her cold. “That I can’t tell you. What is madness? I know I have got you here—in my power. And I know I mean to keep you. If that is madness, well—” he lifted his shoulders slightly, the old characteristic movement—“then I am mad.”
She stared at him in growing apprehension. Was the man sober? The doubt flashed through her mind and vanished. He was so deadly calm in his anger. He had locked away his fury as if it were a flaming furnace behind iron doors. But his strength was terrible, unsparing. It menaced her, whichever way she turned.