"All! ... Not all, Herr?"
"All."
"Herr ... I can't." The words rattled in her throat like a death-agony.
"You mean you refuse?" He too had risen, and stood looking at her with dilated eyes.
She folded her hands on her breast. "I have always been obedient, Herr, to your every wish. I have never been unwilling or grumbled. I'll go on doing all you order me to do. If you say, 'Go out and be stoned to death,' I'll go. But just this one thing, I beseech you from the bottom of my heart, don't ask me?"
He regarded her in wrathful amazement. So accustomed had he become to her unconditional obedience, that this explosion in her of a spark of resistance was incomprehensible to him. Was his power over her, that he had imagined unlimited, thus suddenly to end? Surely this woman had of her own accord made herself his body-slave? She had sold herself body and soul to his house, and therefore it was unpardonable presumption in her to assert unexpectedly that she had a will of her own.
The blood mounted hotly to his head, and his eyes flashed. "You shall!--I say you shall!"
She retreated and shrank against the wall. From the dark background her eyes shone out at him like a persecuted wild-cat's. "I won't," she muttered.
All the inherited brutality of the feudal master awoke in him. The wine, too, was doing its work. He sprang on her, and caught her by the breast.
The buttons of her jacket burst beneath his violent attack, and her bare bosom gleamed forth. He transfixed her with the intensity of his gaze.