Her voice had a tone of entreaty in it. He dropped his eyes, overcome by the passion that streamed from her.
“Is it not so?” she cried again.
“Do you wish me to do so?” he said amazed. His voice seemed not his own; it was as if another spoke for him. He had the same sensation of powerlessness as once before when she had lashed him with her tongue in the room downstairs.
“Wish you?” she cried. “Why, yes; what else?”
He lifted his eyes to hers; the room seemed to have grown darker yet in those few minutes. He could only see now a shadowed face looking at him; but her bright passionate eyes shone out from it and dominated him.
Again he spoke, in spite of himself.
“I shall not burn them,” he said.
“Shall not? shall not?”
“I shall not,” he said again.
There was silence. Ralph’s soul was struggling desperately within him. He put out his hand mechanically and took up the papers once more, as if to guard them from this fierce, imperious woman. Beatrice’s eyes followed the movement; and then rested once more on his face. Then she spoke again, with a tense deliberateness that drove every word home, piercing and sharp to the very centre of his spirit.