She jerked herself backwards so as to find support against the pillows as she sat.
“What do you propose to do?” she asked him, with an ugly look on her face.
As a matter of fact, he had made no plans whatever, the role of theatrical libertine never having come within his experience. But her question gave an opening for the brute that necessarily lingers in most men.
“I’ll stay here all night, until you kiss me of your own free will.”
“I have always thought of you as a coward,” she said. “I suppose that’s a threat to compromise me. It won’t do me much harm, I assure you.”
He threw his hat and gloves on the table and came close to the bedside. The brute led him on. Her beauty had captivated him. Her scorn angered him. His shifty blue eyes gleamed.
“If you don’t do what I ask—it’s a very small thing—I’ll take it by force and I’ll stay here all night, and I’ll follow you wherever you go and see you every day, until you come to your senses. I love you and I’m not going to be trifled with. And I’m damned if you can say you have given me no encouragement.” He bent forward. She thought he was going to throw his arms round her. All the pent-up hatred of him, all the fermenting elements of self-loathing, remorse, and despair, all the agonising recrudescence of hopeless, passionate love for the man that was and was not her husband, found vent in a hoarse inarticulate cry. And then she lost control of reason, and burst into passionate invective.
“You love me! You! You think a woman who knows what you are would have anything to do with you, save fool you and throw you aside. You who threw away a wife that was worth ten million of me, and a friend that was worth twenty million of you. I hate you. I despise you. I despise you as much as I despise myself, and that’s saying a good deal.” She spat the words at him: “When you were living smugly with your wife, you looked down upon me. Now you have got rid of her, you come to me like a brute and a coward.”
“You’ll kindly leave Mrs. Merriam out of the discussion,” said Gerard sardonically.
“She’s the whole question,” cried Minna. “She and nothing else—she who has been my burning torture and shame for four years. Do you think, because I live recklessly like a wanton woman, that I can’t feel degradation? And you shall feel it too. You fool! You worse than fool! She was as pure as a saint—as one of your Christian saints in heaven—and I was jealous of her—I didn’t know her then—but you—— Do you know where Hugh Colman was that night of the murder? He was with me—all night. The thieves came in by the window I had unbolted for him. He had been married to me for nearly a year. We had quarrelled. It was my fault. I thought I hated him. Oh, God, if you knew how I love him now! Then you would know what love is!”