“You won’t keep it. Do you understand? Sit down. I won’t allow you to leave this room.”
“Do you mean you’ll use force to prevent me?”
“If necessary. Sit down—over there.”
She sat down then, meekly, despairingly; but almost immediately she got up again.
“Father, let me go, please. To-morrow he is leaving London for a day or two. I want to see him before that.”
Although she had not moved from her chair, he stepped between it and the door; and he angrily told her to be seated. Once or twice more she rose and implored him to let her go. Then she sat still, in agony. She thought of this lost hour, this hour of mellow sunlight beyond the trees, by the water of Kensington Gardens; and of her lover waiting for her.
It was a cruel little scene, and Mr. Verinder felt the cruelty of it. He knew that he was inflicting anguish; worse, much worse than if he had really employed force. Throughout the dragging hour he might have beaten her, thrown her down upon the floor, knelt on her chest, and he would have hurt her less. He walked about the room torturing and tortured; his thoughts on fire, and yet his heart coldly aching.
Once she said words that sounded like an echo of another voice, but in her pathetically pleading tones they stabbed Mr. Verinder with a stiletto thrust.
“I’m not very happy, as it is, father. Please don’t make things harder.”