“I’ll make you! There is no resource I will not use. I’ll bankrupt your family. I’ll wipe it off the earth.”
Gail’s nails were pressing into her palms. She felt that her lips were cold. Her eyes were widening, as the horror of him began to grow on her. He was glaring at her now, and there was no attempt to conceal the savage cruelty on his face.
“I’ll compromise you,” he went on. “I’ll connect your name with mine in such a way that marriage with me will be your only resource. I’ll be an influence you can’t escape. There will not be a step you can take in which you will not feel that I am the master of it. Marry you? I’ll have you if it takes ten years! I’ll have no other end in life. I’ll put into that one purpose all the strength, and all the will that I have put into the accomplishment of everything which I have done; and the longer you delay me the sooner I’ll break you when I do get you.”
Out of her very weakness had come strength; out of her overwhelming humiliation had come pride, and though the blood had left her face waxen and cold, something within her discovered a will which was as strong in resistance as his was in attack. She knew it, and trembled in the knowledge of it.
“You can’t make me marry you,” she said, with infinite scorn and contempt.
He clenched his fists and gritted his teeth. Into his eyes there sprang a blaze which she had never before seen, but dimly, in the eyes of any man; but she needed no experience to tell her its despicable meaning. His lips, which had been snarling, suddenly took a downward twitch, and were half parted. His nostrils were distended, and the blood, flooding into his face, empurpled it.
“Then I’ll have you anyhow!” he hoarsely told her, and, his arms tensed and his head slightly lowered forward, he made as if to advance toward her. He saw in her frightened eyes that she would scream, but he did not know that at that moment she could not. Her heart seemed to have lost its action, and she stood, trembling, faint, in the midst of her strewn music, with the sensation that the room was turning dark.
The house was very quiet. Mrs. Sargent and Mrs. Davies were upstairs. The servants were all in the rear of the house, or below, or in the upper rooms, at their morning work. He turned swiftly and closed the door of the music room, then he whirled again towards her, with ferocity in his eyes. He came slowly, every movement of him alive with ponderous strength. He was a maniac. He was insane. He was frenzied by one mad thought which had swept out of his universe every other consideration, and the glut to kill was no more fearful than the purpose which possessed him now.