yllable words? Until we are well out of this, if
we are ever out at all, you will have to do what I tell you. You are not
going to desert ship."

She stared at him speechlessly. Then:

"By what right do _you_ issue orders to _me_?" she cried.

"Let us say," he returned in the coin of her own harshness, "by the old
right of a husband. If that isn't sufficient you can add to it: by the
time-honoured right of the lord and master! For that is just precisely
what I intend being until I can turn you over to your dawdling set in
the city again. Wait a minute," he added sternly, as he saw her lips
opening to a rush of words. "I would be glad to have you go were
conditions less exacting. Now I have thought matters over and it appears
essential that certain of our marriage vows be remembered. You don't
have to love or honour, but by thunder you are going to obey! Reversion
to an ancient order of things, eh? Well, the world was better then,
largely in that women were worth a man's while. Further, for my part, I
fully intend to keep my obligation of protecting you against your own
foolishness, the storm, Gratton, Brodie, and the devil himself. And,
finally, I mean to keep my promise to your father. He sent me to get Gus
Ingle's gold; it's here. So is Gratton with his cut-throat crowd. I will
in all probability have my hands full. But, once and for all, you stick
with me. Where," he concluded with the last jeer, "the wife's place
should be!"

Gloria tried to stare him down, to wither him with the fire of her
scorn, to brave by him. But the man, all emotion having receded from his
eyes, was once more like so much rock, but rock endowed with dormant
power of aggression. She felt as though she had to do with a great
poised boulder which offered no menace so long as she let it alone, but
which needed but an unwary step of hers to destroy its equilibrium and
thus bring it crashing down upon her, crushing her. She began by
wondering if she had mistaken his look just now when she had leaped to
the triumphant decision that he loved her; she ended by feeling hopeless
and tired and uncertain of all things. To keep him from noting how she
was trembling she went hastily back to the roll of bedding and dropped
down to it. On the instant it became clear to her that physically King
was the master. To her, before whom difficulties had heretofore
invariably melted, it seemed equally clear that there must be a way out
of an unbearable situation.