"Get up!" he said harshly—"Don't lie there like a fallen angel!"
She yielded to his powerful grasp as he pulled her to her feet—then looked at him still laughing.
"Plenty of muscle!" she said—"Well?"
He held her hands still and gripped them fiercely. She gave a little cry.
"Don't! You forget my rings,—they hurt!"
At once he loosened his hold, and gazed moodily at her small fingers on which two or three superb diamond circlets glittered like drops of dew.
"Your rings!" he said—"Yes—I forgot them! Wonderful rings!—emblems of your inordinate vanity and vulgar wealth—I forgot them! How they sparkle in this wide moonlight, don't they? Just a drifting of nature's refuse matter, turned into jewels for women! Strange ordinance of strange elements! There!" and he let her hands go free—"They are not injured, nor are you."
She was silent pouting her under-lip like a spoilt child, and rubbing one finger where a ring had dinted her flesh.
"So you actually think I have come here to get away from YOU?" he went on—"Well for once your ineffable conceit is mistaken. You think yourself a personage of importance—but you are nothing,—less than nothing to me, I never give you a thought—I have come here to study—to escape from the crazy noise of modern life—the hurtling to and fro of the masses of modern humanity,—I want to work out certain problems which may revolutionise the world and its course of living—"
"Why revolutionise it?" she interrupted—"Who wants it to be revolutionised? We are all very well as we are—it's a breeding place and a dying place—voila tout!"