“You say you love me,” she whispered. “Prove it me now, and I will believe you.
“Ah!” he sighed. “And believing me? What then?”
He had himself grimly in hand, yet feared he should not prove strong enough to hold himself for long.
“You... you shall find me your... dutiful wife,” she faltered, crimsoning.
His arms tightened about her; he crushed her to him, he bent his head to hers and his lips burnt the lips she yielded to him as though they had been living fire.
Anon, she was to weep in shame—in shame and in astonishment—at that instant of surrender, but for the moment she had no thought save for her brother. Exultation filled her. She accounted that she had conquered, and she gloried in the power her beauty gave her, a power that had sufficed to melt to water the hard-frozen purposes of this self-willed man. The next instant, however, she was cold again with dismay and newborn terror. He unclasped her arms, he drew back, shaking off the hands she had rested upon his shoulders. His white face—the flush had faded from it again—smiled a thought disdainfully.
“You bargain with me,” he said. “But I have some knowledge of your ways of trading. They are overshrewd for an honest gentleman.”
“You mean,” she gasped, her hand pressed to her heart, her face a deathly white, “you mean that you'll not save him?”
“I mean,” said he, “that I will have no further bargains with you.”
There was such hard finality in his tone that she recoiled, beaten and without power, to return to the assault. She had played and lost. She had yielded her lips to his kisses, and—husband though he might be in name—shame was her only guerdon.