"Oh, I'm a woman—all woman."
"But the motive," I gritted. "If I had done you the greatest injury a woman could suffer—if you had a lifelong grudge to satisfy—you could hardly be more vindictively merciless."
Her smile at this was not pleasant to look upon.
"Somebody has said that the keenest pleasure in life is the pleasure of absolute possession. I own you, Bertie Weyburn, body and soul, and you know it. If you were a big enough man, you'd kill me: if you were big enough in another way, you'd defy me and take what is coming to you."
"And since I am not yet ready to become either a murderer or a martyr?"
"You will probably do the other remaining thing—marry me some day and give me a chance to teach you how to spend the money which, thus far, you don't seem to know what to do with."
"You have money enough of your own—or your father's," I retorted.
"I'd rather spend yours," she said coolly.
It was the old impasse at which we had arrived a dozen times before, only the wretched involvement seemed to be adding coil upon coil with the passing of time. I have often wondered if she really meant the marriage threat. At this distance in time it appears extremely doubtful. She may have had moments in which the steadily augmenting output of the Little Clean-Up tempted her, but this is only a surmise. And a little later I was to learn that during this very winter when she was dragging me bound and helpless at the end of her trail-rope, she was—but I need not anticipate.
"You have me bluffed to a standstill, but sometimes I wonder if it isn't only a bluff," I said, in reply to her remark that she'd rather spend my money than her father's. "What if I should tell you here and now that this is the end of It?—that you can't make a plaything of me any longer? What would you do?"