"Silly! Yes, I am silly," he admitted between his teeth, and flinging back his head to regard her with fierce, wet eyes. "I am silly to have believed in you and in your false affection;" before she could protest against this language--she had risen to do so--he hurled himself across the room, and gripped her wrists so tightly that she could have screamed with pain. "You shan't treat me in this way--do you hear, you shan't. I'm not going to be whistled to your feet like a dog and then kicked aside. Married! Yes, you are married, as you were when you whistled. But hang your husband and damn your husband--he has no claim on you, other than a legal one. Mine you are, and mine you shall be. I tell you, Leah"--he shook her in his anger--"that you must leave this man, and come with me. You must--you must!"--he dragged her hands to his breast--"you shall!"
"Harry!" She gasped his name in sheer surprise.
"Yes. Harry--the fool, if you will; the man, as you shall find."
"How--how dare you?"
"Because I do dare, and I shall dare more, if you play football with my heart. Why couldn't you leave me alone? Why couldn't you stick to the man whose name you bear? Don't struggle, for you shan't be free till I have had my say out. You made me love you--now I shall make you love me. You and your society rubbish, and gimcrack rules, and polite lies, and make-believe of truth! You with--ah-r-r-r!" he shook her again--"you over-civilised coquette, you Circe-of-many-wiles, you ruin of honest men! Do you think that I, who am flesh and blood, care for your lady and gentleman humbug? No, no! I am a man, you a woman, and we are one; you hear--one. If not, I'll put a bullet in your head and another through my own. You have fooled many, you shan't fool me. There!" ha flung her roughly from him; "now you can ring for your servants, to put me to the door."
With bruised wrists and wide-open eyes Leah stood dumfoundered. Jim, at his worst, had never been like this. If he had been she would have truly loved him. At the moment she very nearly loved Askew, recognising in his outburst that masterful nature which every woman adores and succumbs to. In spite of her dexterity in playing with amorous fire, it really seemed as though she was burning her fingers on this occasion. Naturally, she enjoyed the experience. This reversion to cave-life thrilled her pulses. Had Leah been capable of loving anything with a beard she would have then and there fallen at Askew's feet and implored him to trample on her. But her absolute ignorance of the strongest of passions, save self-love, snatched the victory in--what would have been to an ordinary woman--the hour of defeat.
"Well," she said, admiration struggling with anger, "you are a brute!"
The man, still panting from conflicting passions, acted strangely and foolishly, as men do at crucial moments. He smoothed his hair, arranged his tie, and pulled down his waistcoat, not looking at her but into a near mirror. Yet he saw her astonished face at second hand, and smiled grimly.
"I can be a brute," said he, ominously quiet; "but you haven't seen me at my worst yet."
"Good heavens!" This was undoubtedly a man--the man--the dominating male, the genuine lord of creation, whose animal honesty can rend the cobweb entanglements of the female sex, and does rend them, when the bandage of love inopportunely slips. Defiance would not lure him again to his proper position at her feet; and she was half afraid of the might her trickiness had evoked. But in woman's weakness lies woman's strength, and Delilah pulled down the corners of her mouth to subjugate Samson.