"One step nearer," she hissed, between set, glistening teeth, "and I'll bury it in your heart or my own!"
She raised it with a gesture grand and terrible, and rising slowly from her seat, confronted him like a little tigress.
"Mollie," he said, imploringly, "listen to me—your husband!"
Her white teeth locked together with a clinching noise; she stood there like a pale little fury.
"Have you no pity for such love as mine, Mollie? Is your heart made of stone, that all my devotion can not melt it?"
To his horror, she broke into a discordant, mirthless laugh.
"His devotion! He tears me away from my friends, he locks me up in a dungeon until he drives me mad! His devotion!"
She laughed hysterically again.
"It seems harsh, Mollie, but it is not meant in harshness. If there were any other way of winning you, you know I would never resort to such extreme measures. I am not the only man that has carried off the woman he loved, when other means failed to win her."
Again he came nearer, holding out his hands with an imploring gesture.