It was a long speech for Jim. At its conclusion he drew his sleeve across his face and bent down to re-arrange the contents of his bundle.
Tears were falling from her eyes at last. Noiselessly enough, and without that redness of nose, those contortions of face, which render them so unbecoming to most women.
"Is there no way but this?" she murmured. "No way but this? It's impossible! It's absurd! It's infamous! Do you know who I am? Do you know what you ask? How dare you dictate terms to me? How dare you presume to say I shall do this, I shall not do that? Leave my house this minute. I will not listen to another syllable!"
She was blazing out again, and the fire of pride had dried her tears ere she concluded. Anger brought back her natural courage, but it was too late.
Gentleman Jim's face, distorted with fury, looked hideous. Under his waistcoat lurked a long thin knife. Maud never knew how near, for one ghastly moment, that knife was to being buried in her round white throat
.
He was not quite madman enough, however, to indulge his passions so far, with the certainty of immediate destruction.
"Have a care!" he hissed through his clenched teeth. "If you and me is to be enemies, look out! You know me--leastways you ought to; and you know I stick at nothing!"
She was still dreadfully frightened. Once more she went back to the old plea, and offered him fifty pounds--a hundred pounds. Anything!
He was tying the knots of his bundle. Completing the last, he looked up, and the glare in his eyes haunted her through many a sleepless night.