The man’s words were, undoubtedly, prompted by what he firmly believed to be the nature of the relation between the girl and Aaron King—­a belief for which he had, to his mind, sufficient evidence.  But Sibyl had no understanding of his meaning.  In the innocence of her pure mind, the purport of his words was utterly lost.  Her very fear of the man was not a reasoning fear, but the instinctive shrinking of a nature that had never felt the unclean touch of the world in which James Rutlidge habitually moved.  It was this very unreasoning element in her emotions that made her always so embarrassed in the man’s presence.  It was because she did not understand her fear of him, that the girl, usually so capable of taking her own part, was, in his presence, so helpless.

James Rutlidge, by the intellectual, moral, and physical atmosphere in which he lived, was made wholly incapable of understanding the nature of Sibyl Andres.  Secure in the convictions of his own debased mind, as to her relation to the artist; and misconstruing her very manner in his presence; he was not long in putting his proposal into words that she could not fail to understand.

When she did grasp his meaning, her fears and her trembling nervousness gave place to courageous indignation and righteous anger that found expression in scathing words of denunciation.

The man, still, could not understand the truth of the situation.  To him, there was nothing more in her refusal than her preference for the artist.  That this young woman—­to him, an unschooled girl of the hills—­whom he had so long marked as his own, should give herself to another, and so scornfully turn from him, was an affront that he could not brook.  The very vigor of her wrath, as she stood before him,—­her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, and her beautiful body quivering with the vehemence of her passionate outburst,—­only served to fan the flame of his desire; while her stinging words provoked his bestial mind to an animal-like rage.  With a muttered oath and a threat, he started toward her.

But the woman who faced him now, with full understanding, was very different from the timid, frightened girl who had not at first understood.  With a business-like movement that was the result of Brian Oakley’s careful training, her hand dropped to her hip and was raised again.

James Rutlidge stopped, as though against an iron bar.  In the blue eyes that looked at him, now, over the dark barrel of the revolver, he read no uncertainty of purpose.  The small hand that had drawn the weapon with such ready swiftness, was as steady as though at target practice.  Instinctively, the man half turned, throwing up his arm as if to shield his face from a menacing blow.  “For God’s sake,” he gasped, “put that down.”

In truth, James Rutlidge was nearer death, at that instant, than he had ever been before.

Drawing back a few fearful paces, his hands still uplifted, he said again, “Put it down, I tell you.  Don’t you see I’m not going to touch you?  You are crazy.  You might kill me.”