"How wrong?"
"Because—I would not give you to another woman, though you cried out for her till the heavens fell!"
I began to laugh, but her eyes still harboured lightning.
"You should not go to her, whether or not you loved her!" she repeated. "I would not have it. I would not endure it!"
"Yet—if I loved another——"
"No! That is treason! Your happiness should be in me. And if you wavered I would hold you prisoner against your treacherous and very self!"
"How could you hold me?"
"What? Why—why—I——" She sat biting her scarlet lips and thinking, with straight brows deeply knitted, her greyish-purple eyes fixed hard on me. Then a slight colour stained her cheeks, and she looked elsewhere, murmuring: "I do not know how I would hold you prisoner. But I know I should do it, somehow."
"I know it, too," said I, looking at my ring she wore.
She blushed hotly: "It is well that you do, Euan. Death is the dire penalty if my prisoner escapes!" She hesitated, bit her lip, then added faintly: "Death for me, I mean." After a moment she slowly lifted her eyes to mine, and so still and clear were they that it seemed my regard plunged to the very depths of her.