“Do not make claim upon us, also, Matsuda Isami,” she scornfully mocked. “It is not possible you purchased us, too?”
“No, but I shall do so, Madame Azalea.”
“Oh, no, that is not possible.”
Her proud and stubborn demeanor caused him to change his tone.
“Listen,” he said. “By the law you are no longer the wife of the barbarian. He has deserted you and hence you are divorced. Become wife with me. My house awaits your coming, and I have sworn to possess you.”
“I would rather wed with Death,” was her answer.
“‘My house awaits your coming, and I have sworn to possess you.’”
(Page [162])
He turned in savage exasperation and ran toward the house. She, standing still now, watched him enter. A moment later she heard his hoarse laughter and the crashing of articles within. Sick despair crept through her being, freezing her faculties. She could not move, but stood like one fascinated, watching the trembling of the house itself. It shivered, swayed and shook from side to side, as though a very tempest were sweeping it within. Then suddenly there was an upheaval, a splintering crash, and the little house upon the hill was a mass of broken debris. Matsuda, his passion unsatisfied with the destruction of the furniture, had seized the main pole of the house—the support of the frail structure—and had shaken it with such violence that the house itself had collapsed. A providence which seems by some irony of fate to watch over the fortunes of the evil, had saved the man himself from so much as a scratch. He was snorting and puffing like a bull as he sped down the hill past the trembling, shrinking Azalea.
A sound escaped her lips. It could not be called a cry. She made a little rush toward the fallen house, then stopped and covered her eyes with her sleeves. She was homeless, without means, and upon her back her warm, sleeping babe hung heavy and helpless.