Somewhat impatiently he pushed Rayma aside. Then he got to his feet, and went towards Pansy.
His step behind her made the girl's heart start beating violently.
He was coming to issue some further ultimatum. Perhaps not an ultimatum even, but an order.
Pansy had wanted to see her captor, to plead for her father. Now that he was there, the words refused to pass her lips. To have asked any favour of him would have choked her.
"Well, Pansy, are you going to marry me?" he asked.
He might not have been there, for all the notice she took of him.
"Come," he went on, in an authoritative manner, "you must realise that I'm supreme, and that you must obey me."
Pansy realised this to the fullest, and the sense of her own helplessness only infuriated her. Since she had no weapon she could turn on him except her tongue, she hit at him with that. And she hit her very hardest on the spot she knew would hurt the most.
"English women don't marry niggers," she said contemptuously.
The word cut deep into his proud spirit; all the deeper for coming from her lips. Although he whitened under the insult, the knowledge of his own complete supremacy held his fiery temper in check.