The following morning as she was kneeling in a corner of the room by the letter files, one of which she had placed on the floor, she recognized his step in the outer office, heard him pause to joke with young Caldwell, and needed not the visual proof—when after a moment he halted on the threshold—of the fact that his usual, buoyant spirits were restored. He held a cigar in his hand, and in his eyes was the eager look with which she had become familiar, which indeed she had learned to anticipate as they swept the room in search of her. And when they fell on her he closed the door and came forward impetuously. But her exclamation caused him to halt in bewilderment.
“Don't touch me!” she said.
And he stammered out, as he stood over her:—“What's the matter?”
“Everything. You don't love me—I was a fool to believe you did.”
“Don't love you!” he repeated. “My God, what's the trouble now? What have I done?”
“Oh, it's nothing you've done, it's what you haven't done, it's what you can't do. You don't really care for me—all you care for is this mill—when anything happens here you don't know I'm alive.”
He stared at her, and then an expression of comprehension, of intense desire grew in his eyes; and his laugh, as he flung his cigar out of the open window and bent down to seize her, was almost brutal. She fought him, she tried to hurt him, and suddenly, convulsively pressed herself to him.
“You little tigress!” he said, as he held her. “You were jealous—were you—jealous of the mill?” And he laughed again. “I'd like to see you with something really to be jealous about. So you love me like that, do you?”
She could feel his heart beating against her.
“I won't be neglected,” she told him tensely. “I want all of you—if I can't have all of you, I don't want any. Do you understand?”