“I suppose—I shall never be forgiven now,” he muttered roughly.
With an effort Jean forced her tongue to answer him.
“No,” she said in a voice out of which every particle of feeling seemed to have departed. “You will never be forgiven.”
A look of deviltry came into his eyes. He crossed the room and, locking the door, dropped the key into his pocket.
“I think,” he remarked coolly, “in that case, I’d better keep you a prisoner here till you have promised to marry me. It’s you I want. Your forgiveness can come after. I’ll see to that.”
The result of his action was unexpected. Jean turned to the window, unlatched it, and flung open the casement.
“If you don’t unlock that door at once, Geoffrey,” she said quietly, “I shall leave the room—this way”—with a gesture that sufficiently explained her meaning.
Her voice was very steady. Burke looked at her curiously.
“Do you mean—you’d jump out?” he asked, openly incredulous.
Her eyes answered him. They were feverishly bright, with an almost fanatical light in them, and suddenly Burke realised that she was at the end of her tether, that the emotional stress of the last quarter of an hour had taken its toll of her high-strung temperament and that she might even do what she had threatened. He had no conception of the motive behind the threat—of the imperative determination which had leaped to life within her to endure or suffer anything rather than stay locked in this room with Burke, rather than give Blaise, the man who held her heart between his two hands, ground for misunderstanding or mistrusting her anew.