The fire of her words scorched him; he drew back. “Gad!” he said. “If you’d lived in the old days, you’d have been burnt as a witch.”
“There are worse fates than that,” she answered very bitterly.
“There are!” he returned with a flash of anger. “And hotter hells! Well, you’ve made your conditions. I accept them. You are free to go.”
He flung the words with a force and suddenness that struck her like a blow. She sat for a few moments, staring at him. Then, with an effort, she rose.
“Do you mean that?”
He came close to her. His face was drawn. Somehow she felt as though she were looking at an animal through the iron bars of a cage.
He spoke, between his teeth. “Yes, I mean it. I will let you go—just to show you that—as you kindly remarked just now—I am not—all—beast. But—I hold you to your promise. Is that understood? You will marry me.”
She lifted her head with a certain pride. “I have said it,” she said, and turned from him.
He thrust out a hand and grasped her shoulder. “You will say it again!” he said.
She stopped. That grip of his sent panic to her heart, but she stilled it with a desperate sense of expediency. Yet, for the moment she could not speak, so terrible was the strain, and in that moment, as she stood summoning her strength, there came the sound of an electric bell cleaving the dreadful silence so suddenly that she cried out and almost fell.