“You would not have told me,” Tommy said, staring into her face, “if you had thought I cared for you.  Had you thought I cared for you a little jot—­”

“I should have waited,” she confessed, “until you cared for me a great deal, and then I should have told you.  That, I admit, was my intention.”

She had returned his gaze smilingly, and as she strolled on she gave him another smile over her shoulder; it became a protesting pout almost when she saw that he was not accompanying her.  Tommy stood still for some minutes, his hands, his teeth, every bit of him that could close, tight clenched.  When he made up on her, the devil was in him.  She had been gathering a nosegay of wild flowers.  “Pretty, are they not?” she said to him.  He took hold of her harshly by both wrists.  She let him do it, and stood waiting disdainfully; but she was less unprepared for a blow than for what came.

“How you love me, Alice!” he said in a voice shaking with passion.

“How I have proved it!” she replied promptly.

“Love or hate,” he went on in a torrent of words, “they are the same thing with you.  I don’t care what you call it; it has made you come back to me.  You tried hard to stay away.  How you fought, Alice! but you had to come.  I knew you would come.  All this time you have been longing for me to go to you.  You have stamped your pretty feet because I did not go.  You have cried, ‘He shall come!’ You have vowed you would not go one step of the way to meet me.  I saw you, I heard you, and I wanted you as much as you wanted me; but I was always the stronger, and I could resist.  It is I who have not gone a step towards you, and it is my proud little Alice who has come all the way.  Proud little Alice!—­but she is to be my obedient little Alice now.”

His passion hurled him along, and it had its effect on her.  She might curl her mouth as she chose, but her bosom rose and fell.

“Obedient?” she cried, with a laugh.

“Obedient!” said Tommy, quivering with his intensity.  “Obedient, not because I want it, for I prefer you as you are, but because you are longing for it, my lady—­because it is what you came here for.  You have been a virago only because you feared you were not to get it.  Why have you grown so quiet, Alice?  Where are the words you want to torment me with?  Say them!  I love to hear them from your lips.  I love the demon in you—­the demon that burned my book.  I love you the more for that.  It was your love that made you do it.  Why don’t you scratch and struggle for the last time?  I am half sorry that little Alice is to scratch and struggle no more.”

“Go on,” said little Alice; “you talk beautifully.”  But though her tongue could mock him, all the rest of her was enchained.

“Whether I shall love you when you are tamed,” he went on with vehemence, “I don’t know.  You must take the risk of that.  But I love you now.  We were made for one another, you and I, and I love you, Alice—­I love you and you love me.  You love me, my peerless Alice, don’t you?  Say you love me.  Your melting eyes are saying it.  How you tremble, sweet Alice!  Is that your way of saying it?  I want to hear you say it.  You have been longing to say it for two years.  Come, love, say it now!”