"'If you play the tyrant, I will not play the part of submissive slave. Keep me here if you will; restrain me from going where my fancy and my desires lead, and I will obey you. But, father, if you do this, if you do not allow me to go to the ball, meet Dr. Sellick, and accept his offer, then mark me, I will never go out of this house again. Where you keep me I will stay till I am carried out a corpse, and no one and nothing shall ever make me change my mind.' "He stared, laughed, then walked away to his pneumatic trough. 'Suit yourself about that,' said he, 'I have nothing to do with your whims.' Probably he thought I was raving and would forget my words before the day was out. "But there was another person present who knew me better, and I only realized what I had done when I beheld Emma's slight body lying insensible at my feet." XXII. STEEL MEETS STEEL. Up to this point Frank had read with an absorption which precluded the receiving of all outward impressions. But the secret reached, he drew a long breath and became suddenly conscious of a lugubrious sound breaking in upon the silence with a gloomy iteration which was anything but cheering. The fog-horn was blowing out on Dog Island. "I could have done without that accompaniment," thought he, glancing at the sheets still before him. "It gives me a sense of doom." But the fog was thick on the coast and the horn kept on blowing. Frank took up the remaining sheets. * * * * * "Life for me was now at an end indeed, and not for me only, but for Emma. I had not meant to involve her in my fate. I had forgotten her promise, _forgotten_. But when I saw her lying there I remembered, and a sharp pang pierced me for all my devouring rage. But I did not recall my words, I could not. I had uttered them with a full sense of what they meant to me, and the scorn with which they were received only deepened my purpose to keep the threat I had made. Can you understand such a disposition, and can you continue to love the possessor of it?