She was ashamed of herself, and grew still angrier.  “If you’d only think about some one beside yourself once in a while,” said she.  “You quite wear people out, with your everlasting thinking and talking about yourself.”

“You’d better stop that midnight reading,” flared he.  “Your temper is going to the devil.”

She rose with great dignity; with an expression that seemed to send him tumbling and her soaring she went into the house.

In some moods he would have lain where he fell for quite a while.  But his mood of delight in her charms as a woman had completely eclipsed his deference for her charms as a lady.  He hesitated only a second, then followed her, overtook her at the entrance to her room.  She, hearing him coming, did not face about and put him back in his place with one haughty look.  Instead, she in impulsive, most ill-timed panic, quickened her step.  When the woman flees, the man, if there be any manhood in him, pursues.  He caught her, held her fast.

“Let me go!” she cried, not with the compelling force of offended dignity, but with the hysterical ineffectiveness of terror.  “You are rough.  You hurt.”

He laughed, turned her about in his arms until she was facing him.  “The odor of those pines, out there,” he said, “makes me drunk, and the odor of your hair makes me insane.”  And he was kissing her—­those fierce, strong caresses that at once repelled and compelled her.

“I hate you!” she panted.  “I hate you!”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” retorted he.  “That isn’t what’s in your eyes.”  And he held her so tightly that she was almost crying out with pain.

“Please—­please!” she gasped.  And she wrenched to free herself.  One of his hands slipped, his nail tore a long gash in her neck; the blood spurted out, she gave a loud cry, an exaggerated cry—­ for the pain, somehow, had a certain pleasure in it.  He released her, stared vacantly at the wound he had made.  She rushed into her room, slammed the door and locked it.

“Margaret!” he implored.

She did not answer; he knew she would not.  He sat miserably at her door for an hour, then wandered out into the woods, and stayed there until dinner-time.

When he came in she was sitting by the lake, reading a French novel.  To him, who knew only his own language, there was something peculiarly refined and elegant about her ability at French; he thought, as did she, that she spoke French like a native, though, in fact, her accent was almost British, and her understanding of it was just about what can be expected in a person who has never made a thorough study of any language.  As he advanced toward her she seemed unconscious of his presence.  But she was seeing him distinctly, and so ludicrous a figure of shy and sheepish contrition was he making that she with difficulty restrained her laughter.  He glanced guiltily at the long, red scratch on the pallid whiteness of her throat.