"
A long silence. He lighted a cigarette, smoked it with
deliberation foreign to his usual self but characteristic of him
when he was closely and intensely engaged; for he was like a
thoroughbred that is all fret and champ and pawing and caper until
the race is on, when he at once settles down into a calm, steady
stride, with all the surplus nervous energy applied directly and
intelligently to the work in hand. She was not looking at him, but
she was feeling him in every atom of her body, was feeling the
power, the inevitableness of the man. He angered her, made her
feel weak, a helpless thing, at his mercy. True, it was his logic
that was convincing her, not his magnetic and masterful will; but
somehow the two seemed one. Never had he been so repellent, never
had she felt so hostile to him.
"I will marry you," she finally said. "But I must tell you that I
do not love you--or even like you. The reverse."
His face, of the large, hewn features, with their somehow pathetic
traces of the struggles and sorrows of his rise, grew strange,
almost terrible. "Do you mean that?" he said, turning slowly
toward her.
She quickly shifted her eyes, in which her dislike was showing,
shifted them before he could possibly have seen.
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