“Tell me why I hate you!” she cried.

“Tell me first that you do.”

“Oh, I do, I do indeed!” She said the words in a white heat of hatred.

Before she could prevent him he had raised her hand to his lips.

“Dear Alice!” he said.

“Why is it?” she demanded.

“Listen!” he said.  “Listen to your heart, Alice; it is beating now.  It is telling you why.  Does it need an interpreter?  It is saying you hate me because you think I don’t love you.”

“Don’t you?” she asked fiercely.

“No,” Tommy said.

Her hands were tearing each other, and she could not trust herself to speak.  She sat down deadly pale in the chair he had offered her.

“No man ever loved you,” he said, leaning over her with his hand on the back of the chair.  “You are smiling at that, I know; but it is true, Lady Disdain.  They may have vowed to blow their brains out, and seldom did it; they may have let you walk over them, and they may have become your fetch-and-carry, for you were always able to drive them crazy; but love does not bring men so low.  They tried hard to love you, and it was not that they could not love; it was that you were unlovable.  That is a terrible thing to a woman.  You think you let them try to love you, that you might make them your slaves when they succeeded; but you made them your slaves because they failed.  It is a power given to your cold and selfish nature in place of the capacity for being able to be loved, with which women not a hundredth part as beautiful as you are dowered, and you have a raging desire, Alice, to exercise it over me as over the others; but you can’t.”

Had he seen her face then, it might have warned him to take care; but he heard her words only, and they were not at all in keeping with her face.

“I see I can’t,” was what she cried, almost in a whisper.

“It is all true, Alice, is it not?”

“I suppose so.  I don’t know; I don’t care.”  She swung round in her chair and caught his sleeve.  Her hands clung to it.  “Say you love me now,” she said.  “I cannot live without your love after this.  What shall I do to make you love me?  Tell me, and I will do it.”

He could not stop himself, for he mistrusted her still.

“I will not be your slave,” he said, through his teeth.  “You shall be mine.”

“Yes, yes.”

“You shall submit to me in everything.  If I say ‘come,’ you shall come to wheresoever it may be; and if I say ‘stay,’ and leave you for ever, you shall stay.”

“Very well,” she said eagerly.  She would have her revenge when he was her slave.

“You can continue to be the haughty Lady Disdain to others, but you shall be only obedient little Alice to me.”

“Very well.”  She drew his arm towards her and pressed her lips upon it.  “And for that you will love me a little, won’t you?  You will love me at last, won’t you?” she entreated.