“Illusions are all very well for a school-girl, my dear Suzanne,” he remarked with a cool shrug of his massive shoulders.  “Reality should be more attractive to you now....”

He looked her up and down, realizing perhaps for the first time that she was exquisitely beautiful; beautiful always, but more so now in the pathos of her helplessness.  Somewhat perfunctorily, because in his ignorance of women he thought that it would please her, and also because vaguely something human and elemental had suddenly roused his pulses, he relinquished his nonchalant attitude, and came a step nearer to her.

“You are very beautiful, my Suzanne,” he said half-ironically, and with marked emphasis on the possessive.

Again he drew nearer, not choosing to note the instinctive stiffening of her figure, the shrinking look in her eyes.  He caught her arm and drew her to him, laughing a low mocking laugh as he did so, for she had turned her face away from him.

“Come,” he said lightly, “will you not kiss me, my beautiful Suzanne? ... my wife, my princess.”

She was silent, impassive, indifferent so he thought, although the arm which he held trembled within his grip.

He stretched out his other hand, and taking her chin between his fingers, he forcibly turned her face towards him.  Something in her face, in her attitude, now roused a certain rough passion in him.  Mayhap the weary wailing during the day, the agonizing impatience, or the golden argosy so near to port, had strung up his nerves to fever pitch.

Irritation against her impassiveness, in such glaring contrast to her glowing ardor of but a few weeks ago, mingled with that essentially male desire to subdue and to conquer that which is inclined to resist, sent the blood coursing wildly through his veins.

“Ah!” he said with a sigh half of desire, half of satisfaction, as he looked into her upturned face, “the chaste blush of the bride is vastly becoming to you, my Suzanne! ... it acts as fuel to the flames of my love ... since I can well remember the passionate kisses you gave me so willingly awhile ago.”

The thought of that happy past, gave her sudden strength.  Catching him unawares she wrenched herself free from his hold.

“This is a mockery, prince,” she said with vehemence, and meeting his half-mocking glance with one of scorn.  “Do you think that I have been blind these last few weeks? ...  Your love for me hath changed, if indeed it ever existed, whilst I ...”

“Whilst you, my beautiful Suzanne,” he rejoined lightly, “are mine ... irrevocably, irretrievably mine ... mine because I love you, and because you are my wife ... and owe me that obedience which you vowed to Heaven that you would give me....  That is so, is it not?”

There was a moment’s silence in the tiny cottage parlor now, whilst he—­gauging the full value of his words, knowing by instinct that he had struck the right cord in that vibrating girlish heart, watched the subtle change in her face from defiance and wrath to submission and appeal.