When he spake again his voice was very fierce, and he saith, "Patience,
I do command thee to release me."

But she spake never a word.

And again he said, "Better let me out to love thee, than keep me here
until I hate thee."

She shivered, leaning against the door, until the big bolt rattled in
its braces.

And he said yet again, "By the Lord God, an thou dost keep me here to
sully my good name, and that of thy father and mother, who have been to
me even as my own flesh and blood, I will never live with thee again as
man with wife, but will go forth into the New World to live and to die
with thy handmaid dishonor!"

And she was silent.

Again he spoke, and lifted up his voice in a cry exceeding sorrowful and
bitter, so that my heart froze to hear it.

"Woman! woman! was it for this I gave thee my fair fame to cherish? Or
was it for this that I put my name into thy keeping? Oh, child, listen
while there is yet time! Wilt thou with thy own hands take his manhood
from thy husband to drag it through the mire? Patience, as I have shared
thy childhood, as I have loved and cherished thy girlhood, as I have
held thee in my arms as bride and wife, give me back my honor while
there is yet time. Oh, my wife! my darling!" And I heard him sobbing
like a little lad.

At that sound she put both hands over her ears, and started to her
feet, looking from right to left like a hunted thing, and I could bear
it no longer, but leaped forward and fell on my knees before her, and
grasped her kirtle with both hands. I could scarce speak for tears, but
with all the strength that was in me did I plead with her to draw back
the bolt, but she would not. Now to this day when I do think of the fool
that I was, not to run without her knowledge and bring the old lord, thy
grandfather, or bide my time and unbar the door when she had gone, it
seems as though I must hate myself for evermore. But as I pleaded with
her, all at once there was something cold against my throat, and I
seemed to know that 'twas a dagger, and the steel cowed me, as it doth
sometimes cow strong men, and I stirred not, neither spoke I a word
more. Her face was over me, like a white flower in the purple dusk, but
her eyes bright and terrible. And when she spoke, 'twas not my little
lady's voice, but rather the voice o' a fiend. And she said,

"Swear that thou sayest nothing of all this to man, or to woman, or to
child, else will I kill thee as thou kneelest."

And I