“Let me go!” she cried.
“Speak or I will force it from you. Where is he?”
“I will never speak!” she panted, struggling with him, and trying to snatch her arm from him. “I will never speak! You coward! Let me go!”
“Speak or I will break your wrist,” he hissed.
He was hurting her horribly.
But, “Never! Never! Never!” She shrieked the word at him, her face white with rage and pain, her eyes blazing. “Never, you coward. You coward! Let me go!”
He let her go then—too late remembering himself. He stepped back. Breathing hard, she leant against the table, and nursed her bruised wrist in the other hand. Her face, an instant before white, now flamed with anger. Never, never since she was a little child had she been so treated, so handled! Every fibre in her was in revolt. But she did not speak. She only, rocking herself slightly to and fro, scathed him with her eyes. The coward! The coward!
And he was as yet too angry—though he had remembered himself and released her—to feel much shame for what he had done. He was too wrapt in the boy and his object to think soberly of anything else. He went, his hand shaking a little, his face disordered by the outbreak, to the bell and rang it. As he turned again,
“Your ruin be on your own head!” he cried.
And he looked at her, hating her, hating her rebellious bearing.