“Take me,” she said.  “My voice will reward you.  I feel that you can cure it.”

“For zat man! to go to him again!” Mr. Pericles sneered.

“I never shall do that.”  There sprang a glitter as of steel in Emilia’s eyes.  “I will make myself yours for life, if you like.  Take my hand, and let me swear.  I do not break my word.  I will swear, that if I recover my voice to become what you expected,—­I will marry you whenever you ask me, and then—­”

More she was saying, but Mr. Pericles, sputtering a laugh of “Sanks!” presented a postured supplication for silence.

“I am not a man who marries.”

He plainly stated the relations that the woman whom he had distinguished by the honours of selection must hold toward him.

Emilia’s cheeks did not redden; but, without any notion of shame at the words she listened to, she felt herself falling lower and lower the more her spirit clung to Mr. Pericles:  yet he alone was her visible personification of hope, and she could not turn from him.  If he cast her off, it seemed to her that her voice was condemned.  She stood there still, and the cold-eyed Greek formed his opinion.

He was evidently undecided as regards his own course of proceeding, for his chin was pressed by thumb and forefinger hard into his throat, while his eyebrows were wrinkled up to their highest elevation.  From this attitude, expressive of the accurate balancing of the claims of an internal debate, he emerged into the posture of a cock crowing, and Emilia heard again his bitter mimicry of her miserable broken tones, followed by Ha! dam!  Basta! basta!”

“Sit here,” cried Mr. Pericles.  He had thrown himself into a chair, and pointed to his knee.

Emilia remained where she was standing.

He caught at her hand, but she plucked that from him.  Mr. Pericles rose, sounding a cynical “Hein!”

“Don’t touch me,” said Emilia.

Nothing exasperates certain natures so much as the effort of the visibly weak to intimidate them.

“I shall not touch you?” Mr. Pericles sneered.  “Zen, why are you here?”

“I came to my friend,” was Emilia’s reply.

“Your friend!  He is not ze friend of a couac-couac.  Once, if you please:  but now” (Mr. Pericles shrugged), “now you are like ze rest of women.  You are game.  Come to me.”

He caught once more at her hand, which she lifted; then at her elbow.

“Will you touch me when I tell you not to?”

There was the soft line of an involuntary frown over her white face, and as he held her arm from the doubled elbow, with her clenched hand aloft, she appeared ready to strike a tragic blow.

Anger and every other sentiment vanished from Mr. Pericles in the rapturous contemplation of her admirable artistic pose.