She did not hear him. She cared nothing about sheep. She was thinking of George, of his imprisonment and madness.
'At last, when I feared that after all you might slip from me by means of that cripple at Wyvenhoe, I did more. I watched you on New Year's Eve; I waited for you to go to sleep, that I might fire your house. You did better than I had thought, you went out; and then I set the Ray Farm in flames. What cared I for the loss? It was nothing. By it I gained you, I secured you under my roof, by burning you out of the shelter of your own.' He swelled with pride. 'You know me now, Glory! Now think you that escape from me is possible? No, you do not, you cannot. I hedge you in, I undermine the ground you tread. I saw away the posts that hold up the roof above your head. You know now what I am, irresistible, almighty, as far as you are concerned, your fate incarnate. And I know you. I know that you are one who will never yield till you have found a man who is mightier in will and in power than you; those who have fought are best friends after the struggle, when each knows his own strength and the full measure of the resistance of the other. We have had one wrestle, and I have flung you at every round; you in your pride have stood up again, and wiped the blood from your heart, and the tears from your eyes, and tried another fall with me; but now, Glory, you have tried your last. Hitherto you fought not knowing the extent of my power, thinking that I put forth my full might when I spoke, but that I had no strength to act. Now you see what I can do, and what I have done, and you will abandon the fruitless battle. Glory! Glory! Come to my heart. You fear me now, and fear is the first step leading to love. Glory! my own Glory!' his voice faltered, and his fingers worked, 'I love you madly. I will do and dare all for you. I will live for you and for nothing in the world but you. Never till this day in the church have I so much as held your hand. Never till this moment, Glory! have I held you to my heart, never till this moment have I felt it bounding against mine, never till this moment have I kissed those dear, dear lips, as I shall now.'
He drew her to him. He unloosed his hands to throw his arms round her. She felt them closing on her like a hoop of iron, she felt his heart beating like the strokes of a blacksmith with his hammer; his burning breath was on her cheek. He! He kiss her! She lie on that heart which had schemed and carried out the destruction of her George!
She cried out. She found her tongue. 'Let go! I hate you as I never hated you before! I hate you as a mad dog, as a poisonous adder! Let go!' She writhed and slipped partly away.
'Never till I have held you to my breast and kissed you,' he said.
'That never, never!' she gasped. She got her hands on his breast and forced his arms asunder behind her.
'Ha, ha! strong,' he laughed, 'but not strong as I.' He gripped her wrists and bent her arms back. She threw herself on the ground, he drew her up. She flung herself against the chair, crushing his hand against the chimney-piece, so that he let go with it for an instant. She groped about with her free hand, in the dark, for some weapon, she grasped something. He cursed her for the pain she had given him, and attempted again to seize her hand. In a moment she had struck him—him the coward assailant, him the thief, him the murderer—between the brows with the weapon her hand had taken. It was a blow with her whole force. There followed a crash of glass, then a sense as of her hand being plunged into fire. Then a shriek loud, tearing through roof and wall, loud, agonised, as only a man or a horse can utter in supreme moments of torture; and Rebow fell on the floor, writhing like a worm, with his hands over his face and eyes.
CHAPTER XXV.
IN THE DARKNESS.
Day by day Elijah Rebow lay, or sat, in the darkened oak parlour with his eyes bandaged, a prey to wrath, pain, despair. The vitriol from the broken vial had got into his eyes, and there was reason to fear had blinded them.