“I never used to tease her. She was fond of me and we got on all right together. Now she flies out at the least thing. It’s your fault. Those everlasting evening walks, which lead to nothing, upset her nerves.”
“Perhaps it’s just as well that they lead to nothing,” he murmured, with his little laugh, the laugh of the tempter. “But I can’t break with her, you know: it would make her unhappy. And I can’t bear to make a woman unhappy.”
She laughed scornfully:
“Yes, you’re so good-natured. From sheer good-nature you would scatter your favours broadcast. Anyway, she’ll have to go.”
“Go? Where to?”
“Don’t ask such silly questions!” she exclaimed, angrily, roused out of her usual indifference. “She’ll have to go, somewhere or other, I don’t care where. You know, when I say a thing, it’s done. And this is going to be done.”
He was now clasping her in his arms:
“You’re so angry. You’re not a bit pretty like that.”
In her temper, she at first refused to let him kiss her: but, as he did not like these tempers and was well aware of the irresistible power of his comely, Moorish virility, he mastered her with rough, smiling violence and held her so tight to him that she was unable to stir:
“You mustn’t be angry any longer.”