He came nearer.

‘Do you think me,’ he asked, under his breath, ’a mere ignorant lout, who has to be shamed before he knows what’s manly and what isn’t?  Do you think because I’m a manufacturer, and the son of one, that I’ve no thought or feeling above my trade?  I know as well as you can tell me, though you speak with words I couldn’t command, that I’m doing a mean and a vile thing—­there; hear me say it, Emily Hood.  But it’s not a cruel thing.  I want to compel you to do what, in a few years, you’ll be glad of.  I want you to accept love such as no other man can give you, and with it the command of pretty well everything you can wish for.  I want to be a slave at your feet, with no other work in life than finding out your desires and satisfying them.  You’re not to be tempted with money, and I don’t try to; but I value the money because it will give me power to show my love.  And mind what I say ask yourself if it isn’t true.  If you hadn’t been engaged already, you’d have listened to me; I feel that power in myself; I know I should have made you care for me by loving you as desperately as I do.  I wouldn’t have let you refuse me—­you hear, Emily?  Emily!  Emily!  Emily!—­it does me good to call you by your name—­I haven’t done so before to-day, have I, Emily?  Not a cruel thing, because I offer you more than any man living can, more of that for which you care most, the life a highly educated woman can appreciate.  You shall travel where you will; you shall buy books and pictures, and all else to your heart’s content; and, after all, you shall love me.  That’s a bold word, but I tell you I feel the power in me to win your love.  I’m not hateful to you, even now; you can’t really despise me, for you know that whatever I do is for no mean purpose.  There is no woman living like you, and to make you my wife I am prepared to do anything, however vile it seems.  Some day you’ll forgive it all, because some day you’ll love me!’

It was speaking as he had never yet done.  He assumed that his end was won, and something of the triumph of passion endued his words with a joyous fervour.  Very possibly there was truth in much that he said, for he spoke with the intense conviction which fulfils prophecies.  But the only effect was to force Emily back upon her cold defiance.

‘I am in your house, Mr. Dagworthy,’ she said, ’and you can compel me to hear whatever you choose to say.  But I have no other answer than that you know.  I wish to leave you.’

His flushed eagerness could not at once adapt itself to another tone.

’No, you don’t wish to leave me.  You want to see that I am a man of my word, that I mean what I say, and am not afraid to stick to it.  Emily, you don’t leave me till you have promised to be my wife.  You’re a noble girl.  You wouldn’t be frightened into yielding.  And it isn’t that way I want to have you.  You’re more now in my eyes than ever.  It shall be love for love.  Emily, you will marry me?’