"What did you mean?" I repeated.
"Take your hand off me," she commanded.
"What did you mean?" I repeated sternly. "Don't be afraid to answer."
She was very young--so the taunt stung her. "I was about to tell you," said
she, "when you began to make it impossible."
I took advantage of this to extricate myself from the awkward position in
which she had put me--I took my hand from her shoulder.
"I am going to leave you," she announced.
"You forget that you are my wife," said I.
"I am not your wife," was her answer, and if she had not looked so
childlike, there in the moonlight all in white, I could not have held
myself in check, so insolent was the tone and so helpless of ever being
able to win her did she make me feel.
"You are my wife and you will stay here with me," I reiterated, my brain on
fire.
"I am my own, and I shall go where I please, and do what I please," was her
contemptuous retort. "Why won't you be reasonable? Why won't you see how
utterly unsuited we are? I don't ask you to be a gentleman--but just a man,
and be ashamed even to wish to detain a woman against her will."
I drew up a chair so close to her that to retreat, she was forced to sit
in the broad window-seat.
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