"And so you think you can leave me—as lightly as Lady Joanna
Farringmore left that man I went to see today?"
She lifted her head with a gasp. "No!" she said. "Oh, no!
Not—like that!"
His eyes pierced her with their appalling brightness. "No, not quite like that," he said, with awful grimness. "There is a difference. An engaged woman can cut the cable and be free without assistance. A married woman needs a lover to help her!"
She shrank afresh from the scorching cynicism of his words. "Dick!" she said. "Have I asked for—freedom?"
"You had better not ask!" he flashed back. "You have gone too far already. I tell you, Juliet, when you gave yourself to me it was irrevocable. There's no going back now. You have got to put up with me—whatever the cost."
"Ah!" she whispered.
"Listen!" he said. "This thing is going to make no difference between us—no difference whatever. You cared for me enough to marry me, and I am the same man now that I was then. The man you have conjured up in your own mind as the writer of those books is nothing to me—or to you now. I am the man who wrote them—and you belong to me. And if you leave me—well, I shall follow you—and bring you back."
His lips closed implacably upon the words; he held her as though challenging her to free herself. But Juliet neither moved nor spoke. She stood absolutely passive in his hold, waiting in utter silence.
He waited also, trying to read her face in the dimness, but seeing only a pale still mask.
At last: "You understand me?" he said.