"I can't go like this, dearest," he pleaded. "You must forgive me—you must! Look at me!"
She turned slowly, stared him full in the face for a moment without the quiver of an eyelid, her fine figure tense, erect, cold, as she quietly said:
"You are tiring me, Jim."
For an instant an impulse of overwhelming anger mastered him. He returned her look with one of concentrated rage and their eyes met in the first supreme clash of wills. For a moment he saw the world red, and caught in its glare something he had never seen in Nan before, a conscious cruelty and a joy in her power that was evil—a cruelty that could spring only from the deepest and most merciless self-worship. For the first time he saw a cold-blooded calculation behind her beautiful eyes, caught its accent in the richly modulated voice, and felt it in the smile which showed the white teeth—the smile of a woman who would pause at nothing to get what she wanted. The old savage impulse to strangle surged through his veins, and he was startled into the consciousness of his situation by the fierce grip of his finger nails in his fists clinched so tight they began to cut the flesh.
A blush of shame tinged his face as he tremblingly said:
"Please, dear, let's not part like this! I've suffered enough to-day. You're only teasing me. And I've acted like a fool. Say that you forgive me!"
"Our engagement is at an end, Mr. Stuart," was the quiet answer.
"Nan——"
Before he could recover from the shock or utter a protest, she opened the door and he had passed out into the night.