“Don’t return to that!” she cried, with an irrepressible outbreak of disgust. “Don’t, for God’s sake, make me despise you at such a moment as this!”
His obstinacy only gathered fresh encouragement from that appeal to his better sense.
“I insist on returning to it.”
She had resolved to bear anything from him—as her fit punishment for the deception of which she had been guilty. But it was not in womanhood (at the moment when the first words of her confession were trembling on her lips) to endure Horace’s unworthy suspicion of her. She rose from her seat and met his eye firmly.
“I refuse to degrade myself, and to degrade Mr. Julian Gray, by answering you,” she said.
“Consider what you are doing,” he rejoined. “Change your mind, before it is too late!”
“You have had my reply.”
Those resolute words, that steady resistance, seemed to infuriate him. He caught her roughly by the arm.
“You are as false as hell!” he cried. “It’s all over between you and me!”
The loud threatening tone in which he had spoken penetrated through the closed door of the dining-room. The door instantly opened. Julian returned to the library.