Her cheeks were crimson as she said, again, “Will you go?”

“Not until you have settled the terms of peace,” he answered with that leering smile.  “Fortune has favored me, this afternoon, and I mean to profit by it.”

For an instant, she looked at him—­frightened and dismayed.  Suddenly, with the flash-like quickness that was a part of her physical inheritance from her mountain life, she darted past him; eluding his effort to detain her—­and was out of the building.

With an oath, the man, acting upon the impulse of the moment, ran after her.  Outside the door of the studio, he caught a glimpse of her white dress as she disappeared into the rose garden.  In the garden, he saw her as she slipped through the little gate in the far corner of the hedge, into the orange grove.  Recklessly he followed.  Among the trees, he glimpsed, again, the white flash of her skirts, and dashed forward.  At the farther edge of the grove that walled in the little yard where Sibyl lived, he saw her standing by the kitchen door.  But between the girl and that last row of close-set trees, waiting his coming, stood the woman with the disfigured face.

Rutlidge paused—­angry with himself for so foolishly yielding to the impulse of his passion.

Myra Willard went toward him fearlessly—­her fine eyes blazing with righteous indignation.  “What are you trying to do, James Rutlidge?” she demanded—­and her words were bold and clear.

The man was silent.

“You are evidently a worthy son of your father,” the woman continued—­every clear-cut word biting into his consciousness with stinging scorn.  “He, in his day, did all he knew to turn this world into a hell for those who were unfortunate enough to please his vile fancy.  You, I see, are following faithfully his footsteps.  I know you, and the creed of your kind—­as I knew your father before you.  No girl of innocent beauty is safe from you.  Your unclean mind is as incapable of believing in virtue, as you are helpless in the grip of your own insane lust.”

The man was stung to fury by her cutting words.  “Take your ugly face out of my sight,” he said brutally.

Fearlessly, she drew a step nearer.  “It is because I am a woman that I have this ugly face, James Rutlidge.”  She touched her disfigured cheek—­“These scars are the marks of the beast that rules you, sir, body and soul.  Leave this place, or, as there is a God, I’ll tell a tale that will forbid you ever showing your own evil countenance in public, again.”

Something in her eyes and in her manner, as she spoke, caused the man—­beside himself with rage, as he was—­to draw back.  Some mysterious force that made itself felt in her bold words told him that hers was no idle threat.  A moment they stood face to face, in the edge of the shadowy orange grove—­the man of the world, prominent in circles of art and culture; and the woman whose natural loveliness was so distorted into a hideous mask of ugliness.  With a short, derisive laugh, James Rutlidge turned and walked away.