dBooks desire

She
cast about for something that would make yielding
impossible. ``You are--repulsive to me.''
He looked at her without change of countenance.
Said he: ``Come to bed. I ask you for the last time.''
There was no anger in his voice, no menace either
open or covert; simply finality--the last word of the
man who had made himself feared and secure in the
mining-camps where the equation of personal courage is
straightway applied to every situation. Mildred
shivered. She longed to yield, to stammer out some excuse
and obey him. But she could not; nor was she able
to rise from her chair. She saw in his hard eyes a look
of astonishment, of curiosity as to this unaccountable
defiance in one who had seemed docile, who had
apparently no alternative but obedience. He was not so
astonished at her as she was at herself. ``What is to
become of me?'' her terror-stricken soul was crying.
``I must do as he says--I must--yet I cannot!''
And she looked at him and sat motionless.
He turned away, moved slowly toward the door,
halted at the threshold to give her time, was gone.


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