But she was not without courage.

“And if I did kiss him—­what then?” she asked defiantly.  “I’ll kiss as I please.”

“Will you?” He caught at her wrist but she eluded him.

“Yes, I will.  What right have you to tell me what I shall do or not do?  I’ll choose my friends as I please and kiss them as I please, Chan or anyone!”

She had not gauged his temper.  Perhaps she hadn’t read the meaning in his eyes.  Perhaps she thought that she could elude him or that the fact that she was on her own land gave her a fancied sense of security.

“You’ll not,” he cried.

“I will.  What right have you to question me?  You can amuse yourself with Una.”

“Stop!” he thundered.

But she had found her spirit and her confidence in her ability to win him to gentleness by one means or another was returning to her.  She was bold now but prepared to melt if the need required it.

“I will not stop,” she cried.  “You and Una.  What right have you to criticize me for what you yourself—­”

She stopped abruptly, for he caught her by the arm and held her.  Jerry said that even yet he was timid of her delicacy—­fearful of the things he had thought her to be.  But he still held her, though she struggled to get away from him.

“Let me go, Jerry.  You’re hurting me.  Please let me go.”

She felt the first touch of his imperviousness when he refused to release her and chose to change her tone.

“Please let me go, Jerry,” she pleaded softly.  “Do you think you are treating me kindly, after all—­all that is between us?  I don’t care for Chan—­I don’t, Jerry.  Let me go.”

In his eyes she read the new judgment.

“Then you’re worse than I supposed,” he muttered.

“Worse!  Oh, Jerry.  Don’t look so—­so coldly.  It hurts me terribly.  I must go.  I can’t stand your looking at me in that way.”

She tried to move away, I think she had every intention of taking to her heels if Jerry had only given her the chance.  But he wouldn’t.  He held her and kept her close beside him.  He was hurting her wrist cruelly.

“Let me go,” she cried, struggling anew.

Her resistance aroused him again.  The animal fury of battle had not died out of his eyes.  He did not know what he intended to do with her—­had no plan, no purpose, he said.  What plan or purpose could he have had unless murder?  And even in his madness I’m sure that that never occurred to him.  But his blood was hot and his anger and bitterness overwhelming.  His fear of her delicacy diminished with her struggles, for her resistance inflamed him.  He did not know, nor did she just then, that the animal instinct to conquer was what she had taught him, and that the turgid stream of his blood was finding new strength and unreason, a strange new impetus in every struggle.  She saw her danger and was powerless to prevent it.  She looked over her shoulder helplessly in the direction