"No," he said, stepping between her and the threshold.
"Be good enough!" Miss Dalrymple's voice sounded imperiously; her eyes flashed.
"One moment!" He was fast losing self-control. "You hold yourself from me—refuse to listen to me. Why? Do you know what I think?" Vehemently. The words of Sonia Turgeinov—"Est ce qu'elle aime un autre?"—flamed through his mind. "That there is some one else; that there always was. And that is the reason you were so gay—so very gay. You sought to forget—"
A change came over Betty Dalrymple's face; she seemed to grow whiter—to become like ice—
"You let me think there wasn't any one; but there was. That story of some one out west?—you laughed it away as idle gossip. And I believed you then—but not now. Who is he—this American?" With a half-sneer.
"There is no one!—there never has been!" said the girl with sudden passion, almost wildly. "I told you the truth."
"Ah," said Prince Boris. "You speak with feeling. When a woman denies in a voice like that—"
"Let me by!" The violet eyes were black now.
"Not yet!" He studied her—the cheeks aflame like roses. "He shall never have you, that some one—I will meet him and kill him first—I swear it—"
"Let me by!"