tly. "I'll kiss as
I please."

"_Will_ you?" He caught at her wrist but she eluded him.

"Yes, I will. What right have you to tell me what I shall do or not
do? I'll choose my friends as I please and kiss them as I please, Chan
or anyone!"

She had not gauged his temper. Perhaps she hadn't read the meaning in
his eyes. Perhaps she thought that she could elude him or that the
fact that she was on her own land gave her a fancied sense of
security.

"You'll not," he cried.

"I will. What right have you to question me? You can amuse yourself
with Una."

"Stop!" he thundered.

But she had found her spirit and her confidence in her ability to win
him to gentleness by one means or another was returning to her. She
was bold now but prepared to melt if the need required it.

"I will not stop," she cried. "You and Una. What right have you to
criticize me for what you yourself--"

She stopped abruptly, for he caught her by the arm and held her. Jerry
said that even yet he was timid of her delicacy--fearful of the things
he had thought her to be. But he still held her, though she struggled
to get away from him.

"Let me go, Jerry. You're hurting me. Please let me go."

She felt the first touch of his imperviousness when he refused to
release her and chose to change her tone.

"Please let me go, Jerry," she pleaded softly. "Do you think you are
treating me kindly, after all--all that is between us? I don't care
for Chan--I don't, Jerry. Let me go."

In his eyes she read the new judgment.

"Then you're worse than I supposed," he muttered.

"Worse! Oh, Jerry. Don't look so--so coldly. It hurts me terribly. I
must go. I can't stand your looking at me in that way."

She tried to move away, I think she had every intention of taking to
her heels if Jerry had only given her the chance. But he wouldn't. He
held her and kept her close beside him. He was hurting her wrist
cruelly.

"Let me go," she cried, struggling anew.

Her resistance aroused him again. The animal fury of battle had not
died out of his eyes. He did not know what he intended to do with
her--had no plan, no purpose, he said. What plan or purpose could he
have had unless murder? And even in his madness I'm sure that that
never occurred to him. But his blood was hot and his anger and
bitterness overwhelming. His fear of her delicacy diminished with her
struggles, for her resistance inflamed him. He did not know, nor did
she just then, that the animal