“Why should I not gain your love? I made an honourable proposal to you. I offered to marry you. You rejected that offer. Why?”
“How can you ask such a question? You are well aware that I was the affianced wife of Mr. Gordon.”
Jewan’s brows contracted, and he ground his teeth, and clutched at the air with his hands, by reason of the passion which moved him.
“If I had a cobra’s poison,” he answered, after a pause, “I would spit it at you every time you mention that name. Between you and him lies a gulf that can never be bridged. You looked your last upon him the evening he left you in Meerut. Even supposing that he still lives, which is doubtful, seeing that a hundred bullets waited for him alone by my orders, he could never rescue you, because I have everywhere spies and tools who would hack him to pieces on a look from me.”
Flora staggered a little, and her face grew pallid; she grasped at the chair with her right hand, and the left she pressed hard against her breast, as if trying to still the throbbing of her wildly beating heart.
The man jumped up and caught her in his arms, for she seemed as if about to fall. His face came close to hers, his hot breath was on her cheek, his glittering eyes looked into hers, and seemed to chill her. She struggled and writhed, but was powerless to free herself from his strong grasp.
“You are mine!” he almost hissed. “You are mine,” he repeated with ferocious glee. “You are mine!” he reiterated for the third time, as he tightened his arm around her waist. “There are moments in our lives when we feel that we have attained something that were worth whatever years in the future may be reserved for us. Such a moment do I experience now; and, for the sake of a victory like this, I could almost die.”
It was an unequal strife. It was muscle, as opposed to virtue and womanly indignation. He might still further tighten his arm until he had squeezed the breath from her body. He might torture her with his words until her heart cracked, and she became a stiffened corpse in his arms; but where would be the triumph? He might as well have tried to grasp a soap bubble and retain its prismatic glory, as to penetrate the invulnerable armour of virtue and honesty in which this woman was shielded.
She drew herself back from him as far as she could. She kept him off with her outstretched arms, and, with an energy that positively startled him for the time, she exclaimed—
“Jewan Bukht, life is a precious thing; we cling to it while there is the faintest glimmer of hope. But sooner than be yours—sooner than be false to the vows made to Walter Gordon—my finger nails shall tear open the veins and let my life flow away. If I had twenty lives, I would yield every one, sooner than be yours even in thought.”