"But I will not. I do not like you the least when you rage like a lioness."
She sank back, coldness and quiet coming to her as suddenly as her anger had leaped up.
"You have told me that you cannot love me," he said, "and I have shown you that the man you love cannot love you. I refuse to go. Awhile since I felt that I was powerless before you, and that I must abide by your yea and nay; but I feel so no longer. Love, I take it, is a battle, and I use a military simile because there is war about us. If a good general wishes to take a position, and if he fails in the direct charge—if he is repelled with loss—he does not on that account retreat; but he resorts to artifice, to stratagem, to the mine, to the sly and adroit approach."
Her courage did not fail, but she felt a chill when he talked in this easy and sneering manner. She had liked him—a little—when he disclosed his love so openly and so boldly, but now no ray of tenderness came from her heart.
"I can give you more of the news of Richmond," said the Secretary, "and this concerns you as intimately as the other. Perhaps I should refrain from telling you, but I am jealous enough in my own cause to tell it nevertheless. Gossip in Richmond—well, I suppose I must say it—has touched your name, too. It links you with me."
"Mr. Sefton," she said in the old cold, level tones, "you spoke of my changing, but I see that you have changed. Five minutes ago I thought you a gentleman."
"If I am doing anything that seems mean to you I do it for love of you and the desire to possess you. That should be a sufficient excuse with any woman. Perhaps you do not realize that your position depends upon me. You came here because I wrote something on a piece of paper. There has been a whisper that you were once a spy in this city—think of it; the name of spy does not sound well. Rumour has touched you but lightly, yet if I say the word it can envelope and suffocate you."
"You have said that you love me; do men make threats to the women whom they love?"
"Ah, it is not that," he pleaded. "If a man have a power over a woman he loves, can you blame him if he use it to get that which he wishes?"
"Real love knows no such uses," she said, and then she rose from her chair, adding: