“Explain, then.”
Passion was overmastering him as he watched the fine scorn in her eyes. He raised her hand to his lips.
“No!” Rhoda exclaimed with sudden wrath. “Your respect—oh, I appreciate your respect!”
She wrenched herself from his grasp, and went apart. Barfoot rose, gazing at her with admiration.
“It is better I should be at a distance from you,” he said. “I want to know your mind, and not to be made insensate.”
“Wouldn’t it be better still if you left me?” Rhoda suggested, mistress of herself again.
“If you really wish it.” He remembered the circumstances and spoke submissively. “Yet the fog gives me such a good excuse for begging your indulgence. The chances are I should only lose myself in an inferno.”
“Doesn’t it strike you that you take an advantage of me, as you did once before? I make no pretence of equalling you in muscular strength, yet you try to hold me by force.”
He divined in her pleasure akin to his own, the delight of conflict. Otherwise, she would never have spoken thus.
“Yes, it is true. Love revives the barbarian; it wouldn’t mean much if it didn’t. In this one respect I suppose no man, however civilized, would wish the woman he loves to be his equal. Marriage by capture can’t quite be done away with. You say you have not the least love for me; if you had, should I like you to confess it instantly? A man must plead and woo; but there are different ways. I can’t kneel before you and exclaim about my miserable unworthiness—for I am not unworthy of you. I shall never call you queen and goddess—unless in delirium, and I think I should soon weary of the woman who put her head under my foot. Just because I am stronger than you, and have stronger passions, I take that advantage—try to overcome, as I may, the womanly resistance which is one of your charms.”