g
like this? How dare you act like this? Are you mad--have you lost
your senses? Do you realise what you are doing?"

He laughed outright now--with sudden harshness, bitterly.

"Mad?" he repeated in a choked voice. "Yes; I am mad! I have been mad
for two years--and I have been a fool. I am mad now--but I am no
longer a fool. I am going to know now--I am going to have an answer
now--this afternoon--before you leave this room. When are you going to
marry me?"

"Marry you?"--she started back.

"Don't do that!" he flung out passionately. "Don't _act_! It is no
surprise, that--eh? You know! Your soul knows! I love you--I have
loved you since that first time on the bridge, you remember, don't
you--that bridge--when your eyes turned my blood to fire? You knew it
then--you know it now!"

Once she had told herself, once in those early days before familiarity,
intimacy perhaps, had blunted the eager edge of curiosity and interest
with which she had studied her new sensation much as one might study a
specimen under a microscope, that the man was a smouldering volcano,
the soul of him elemental and turbulent. It had grown dim and hazy,
that little mental note of classification--but she remembered it now.
It was true! Why had she ever lost sight of it? What would he do?
She was not afraid, only--only--he must not have the mastery, even for
a single instant. There had been eruptions before--little ones. She
had always controlled him--he was just like some great, big animal--one
must never let go the leash! And, besides, some day, probably, she
_would_ marry him!

She laughed now in her turn--shortly.

"And do you think, do you imagine, Monsieur Jean"--her voice rang
sharply through the room--"that you will attain your object any the
more readily by acting like this?"

"Yes; I think so!"--Jean was stepping toward her, reaching out his arms
to grasp her.

"_Jean_!"--she retreated backward, with a startled cry. The man's face
was positively livid, the eyes were burning into hers.

"I love you!"--his voice was hoarse, shrill, out of control. "I love
you! My God, I love you! Do you think that you can own a man's soul
and not pay the price? You made me love you! In a thousand ways you
asked for my love--in a thousand ways you--"

"Jean!" she cried at him again--half running now back across the room.

"Yes, you did!" he shouted passionately, following her. "Yes, you
did--or you have been playing wi