"Now they'll see what I can do," he said savagely. "Gunther's the only real man among them. I must have Gunther. With him I can do what I want—construct, construct!"
She rose, stopping him as he most wanted to continue.
"You must go now," she said quietly; "I've already done what I shouldn't."
He stopped, infuriated at this check to his inclinations, for, beyond his victory over the men he had fought, she still eluded him.
"Did you care what happened to me—much?" he asked savagely.
"Yes; I was surprised how much I cared," she said slowly, keeping her eyes on his.
There are certain strong, direct characters who are most vulnerable in the moment of their greatest exaltation as the generality of men are weakest in their defeats. She saw in his eyes how much she lacked to his complete triumph and suddenly seized the opportunity by the forelock.
"Why are you afraid to marry?" she said vigorously. "You are a child; you don't understand life. You don't know how to draw from it the incitements it can give you. You wish to be a great figure and you think you can remain an outcast."
"What do you mean?" he said roughly, and advancing he took her by the shoulders without her recoiling.
"You want to be another Gunther," she said, meeting his glance with an intensity of ambition greater than his, "and you wish to fight like a guerrilla. You think you need no one, and you need admiration, confidence, to be spurred on, flattered, cajoled, made to feel your greatness, to have it dinned into your ears day and night, to be surrounded by it. You have the vanity of a god and you don't know how to feed it."