"Captain Brooke, for a moment this afternoon I allowed myself and you to forget that I am engaged to your friend. I must remind you of it now."
"I wish to God that I had let him drown in the drift!" he flung out. "Or that I had drowned myself—!"
"I don't wish to be hard or unkind, but I cannot listen to you. I am going to close the window."
He inserted his shoulder, so that she could not close it. The expression of his eyes was such that she dare not face him.
"Answer me one question," he commanded brusquely. There was a growl in his voice that she knew of old as a storm-signal. "I have a right to ask it, and you ought to answer—you shall answer! When I kissed you to-day ... was it against your will?"
Her expression made him feel as if he had slashed her across the face. Had she accepted defeat in that moment—said anything to appease the man's mounting wrath—he might have kept his head. But pain or insult had never the effect of softening Melicent, but only of stiffening her. His taunt stung her to real anger, and, in the midst of her stifled consciousness that she was fighting a losing battle, she clutched at her indignation as at a blade with which she might wound. She had moved towards the door with the intention of escape, but now she returned to the window.
"You think you have the right to ask me that?" she said, with the same ruthless arrogance that she might have used to him in Africa. "You say that to me—you, who hope to turn into something that people may take for an English gentleman! ... You did that this afternoon to get a hold over me! I know your threat! You needn't say it! You mean that, if I don't tell Lance, you will! ... And you suppose I care if you do, or what you do, or anything about you...!"
Before she had got so far, Bert had flung his leg over the sill and vaulted lightly into the room. He came quite close to her, but spoke quietly, under his breath, with an air of desperately holding himself in.
"All right!" he said. "You say you don't care, do you? Well, then, if you say so, I say you lie! You lie, do you hear me?"
"You had better go away before you grow unpardonable," said the girl coldly.