"Yes; but it's the way I always whips 'em."
"You were not told to use me so, and I am not going to remove one article of my clothing."
"Yes, but you shall;" and he approached me, his wild eye glaring with a lascivious light, and the deep passion-spot blazing on his cheek.
"Girl, you've got to yield to me. I'll have you now, if it's only to show you that I can."
I drew back a few steps, and, seizing a broken bottle, waited, with a deadly purpose, to see what he would do. He came so near that I almost fancied his fetid breath played with its damnable heat upon my very cheek.
"You've got to be mine. I'll give you a fine calico dress, and a pretty pair of ear-bobs!"
This was too much for further endurance. What! must I give up the angel-sealed honor of my life in traffic for trinkets? Where is the woman that would not have hotly resented such an insult?
I turned upon him like a hungry lioness, and just as his wanton hand was about to be laid upon me, I dexterously aimed, and hurled the bottle directly against his left temple. With a low cry of pain he fell to the floor, and the blood oozed freely from the wound.
As my first impression was that I had slain him, so was it my first desperate impulse to kill myself; yet with a second thought came my better intention, and, unlocking the door, I turned and left the gloomy cell. I mounted the dust-covered steps, and rapidly threaded silent, spider festooned halls, until I regained the upper courts. How beautiful seemed the full gush of day-light to me! But the heavy weight of a supposed crime bowed me to the earth.
My first idea was to proceed directly to Mr. Summerville's apartment and make a truthful statement of the affair. What he would do or have done to me was a matter upon which I had expended no thought. My apprehension was altogether for the safety of my soul. Homicide was so fearful a thing, that even when committed in actual self-defence, I feared for the justice of it. The Divine interrogatory made to Cain rang with painful accuracy in my mental ear! "Am I my brother's keeper?" I repeated it again and again, and I lived years in the brief space of a moment. Away over the trackless void of the future fled imagination, painting all things and scenes with a sombre color.