"You compel me to repeat," she said, "that you are presuming
on our acquaintance, and that you are forgetting what is due
to me."
He turned upon her, with a savage suddenness which forced a cry
of alarm from Mr. Bashwood's lips.
"Are you, or are you not, My Wife?" he asked, through his set
teeth.
She raised her eyes to his for the first time. Her lost spirit
looked at him, steadily defiant, out of the hell of its own
despair.
"I am _not_ your wife," she said.
He staggered back, with his hands groping for something to hold
by, like the hands of a man in the dark. He leaned heavily
against the wall of the room, and looked at the woman who had
slept on his bosom, and who had denied him to his face.
Mr. Bashwood stole panic-stricken to her side. "Go in there!" he
whispered, trying to draw her toward the folding-doors which led
into the next room. "For God's sake, be quick! He'll kill you!"
She put the old man back with her hand. She looked at him with
a sudden irradiation of her blank face. She answered him with
lips that struggled slowly into a frightful smile.
"_Let_ him kill me," she said.
As the words passed her lips, he sprang forward from the wall,
with a cry that rang through the house.
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