“Here—­don’t you stand there staring at me as if I’d tried to slit your throat just because I’ve kissed your hand.  Suppose I did?  Why shouldn’t I kiss your hand if I want to?  It’s my hand, when all’s said and done, and I’ll kiss it again if I feel like it.  No, no, beauty, I won’t, not if it’s going to make you look at me like that!  Why, queen, I wouldn’t frighten you for worlds!  I love you too much to want to do anything but please you.  I’d do anything, everything, just to please you, to make you like me!  You’ll believe that, won’t you?” And he held out his hands with a supplicating and impassioned gesture.

“Why can’t we be friends?  Try to be friends with me, Mary Virginia!  You would, if you only knew how much I love you.  Why, I’ve loved you ever since that first day I saw you, after you’d come back home.  I was going into the bank, and I turned, and there you were!  You had on a gray dress, and you wore violets, a big bunch of them.  I can smell them yet.  God!  It was all up with me!  I was crazy about you from the start, and it’s been getting worse and worse ... worse and worse!

“You don’t know all I mean to do for you, beauty!  I’m going to give you this little old world to play with.  Nothing’s too good for you.  Look at me!  I’m not an old man yet—­I’ve only just begun to make money for you.  Now be a little kind to me.  You’ve got to marry me, you know.  Look here:  you kiss me good-night, just once, of your own free will, and I swear you shall have anything under the sky you ask me for.  Do you want a string of pearls that will make yours look like a child’s playpretty?  I’ll hang a million dollars around that white throat of yours!”

But there came into the girl’s eyes that which gave him pause.  They stood staring at each other; and slowly the wine-dark flush faded from his face and left him livid.  Little dents came about his nose, and his lips puckered as if the devil had pinched them together.

“No?” said he thickly, and his jaw hardened, and his eyes narrowed under his square forehead.  “No?  You won’t, eh?  Too fine and proud?  My lady, you’ll learn to kiss me when I tell you to, and glad enough of the chance, before you and I finish with each other!  Why, you—­I—­Oh, good God!  Why do you rouse the devil in me, when I only want to be friends with you?”

But she, with a ghastly face, turned swiftly and with her head held high walked out of the room, passed through the wide hall, and ascended the stairs, without even bidding him goodnight.  Let him take his dismissal as he would—­she could stand no more!

Once in her own room, Mary Virginia dismissed Nancy for the night.  She had to be alone, and the colored woman was an irrepressible magpie.  Furiously she scrubbed her hands, as if to remove the taint of his touch.  That he had dared!  Her teeth chattered.  She could barely save herself from screaming aloud.  She bathed her face, dashed some toilet water over herself, and fell into a chair, limp and unnerved.