I turned for one moment with an involuntary feeling of appeal to Mrs. Clayton, but her cold, green eyes were quivering in accordance with the smile that stretched her thin lips to a line of mocking mirth.  One glimpse of sympathy would have carried me to her arms for refuge—­distasteful as she was to me in every way save one.  She, like myself, was a woman.  But such perversion of all natural feeling estranged me from her irreconcilably and forever.

I was alone; shame, humiliation, despair, possessed me; indignation, for the insult I was forced to bear in her presence, filled my soul—­I stood with my head cast down, tears raining on my bosom, my arms dropped nervelessly beside me, my hands clinched, my whole frame trembling with excitement.

Slowly and one by one came those convulsive sobs—­that rend and wrench the physical frame as earthquakes do the earth.  Then rose the sudden resolve—­born of volcanic impulse, irresistible to mind as is the lava-flood to matter, sweeping before it all obstructions of reason, habit, expediency.

If it cost me my life I would avenge myself on this tiger, thirsting for my blood; I would anticipate him in his work of destruction, and the strength of Samson seemed to permeate my frame.

It was strange that at that moment of cold, impetuous energy I forgot the steel I carried in my bosom, and thought only of the power I bore in my own hands.  I determined to strangle him with my strong, elastic fingers, of which I knew full well the powerful grasp.

The consequences were as cobwebs in my estimate—­compared to the ecstasy of such revenge—­for all this flashed through my brain with the swift vividness of lightning, and in less than thirty seconds after his last remark this matter was matured.  The woman prevailed over the lady.

I raised my eyes slowly and dashed away my tears, preparatory to the onset.  He was looking at me wonder-struck, and, perhaps, with something like compunction in his face as I met his gaze.  He must have read an expression that appalled him in those dilated eyes of mine that confronted his, for, as I sprang toward him, he bounded backward and escaped through the door of Mrs. Clayton’s chamber, which he shut after him with undignified alertness.  I stood smiling, and strangely cold, leaning against the mantel-shelf, while my heart beat as though it would have leaped from my throat, and I could feel the pallor of my face as chill as marble.

Mrs. Clayton approached me, but I put her away with waving hands.  “Go, wretch!” I said, “woman no more, you have unsexed yourself.  Leave me in peace—­your touch is poisonous.”

She shrank away silently, and I stood for a while like one frozen; then cast myself down on a chair and gave way to bitter weeping.  The flood-gates were open, and the “waters” had indeed “come in over my soul.”  I had restrained my passionate inclinations until now, not only from a sense of personal dignity, but from a determination not to play into the hands of my enemies and captors, and all the more from such long self-control was the revulsion potent and overwhelming.