“I am doing the best I can,” she said sullenly. But I saw that she was ashamed of her proposal even while she persisted in it; and I grew stronger in my resolve.
“I am helpless,” I said. “Your father can do what he pleases, I am in his hands. But even he is bound by the laws of humanity, which he obeyed when he spared me. I cannot think that he did that, I cannot think that he behaved to me as one soldier to another in order to put me to torture! If he tells me I must go, I must go, I have no remedy. But until he does, I will never believe that it is his wish!”
“You will force yourself on us?” she cried, her voice quivering. “On us, two women as we are, and alone?”
I pointed to my shoulder. “I am not very dangerous,” I said.
“I do not think you are, sir, or ever were,” she retorted with venom. And now for the first time she met my look, her eyes sparkling with anger. “As one soldier to another!” she said. “It is marvellous that you should recognize him as a soldier! But I suppose that the habit of surrender is an education in many ways.”
“Any one may insult a prisoner,” I said. And I had the satisfaction of seeing the blood burn in her face. “But you did not come here to tell me that, Miss Wilmer.”
“No,” she answered. “I came here to tell you that you must go. You must go, sir.”
“When your father sends me away,” I said, “I must needs go. Until he does—”
“You will not?”
“No, Miss Wilmer, by your leave, I will not,” I said with all the firmness of which I was capable. “Unless I am taken by force. And you are a woman. You will not be so untrue to yourself and to your sex as to use force to one, crippled as I am, and helpless as I am. Think! If your dogs broke a raccoon’s leg, would you drag it a mile—two miles?”