"All." "_Herr_ ... I can't." The words rattled in her throat like a death-agony. "You mean you refuse?" He too had risen, and stood looking at her with dilated eyes. She folded her hands on her breast. "I have always been obedient, _Herr_, to your every wish. I have never been unwilling or grumbled. I'll go on doing all you order me to do. If you say, 'Go out and be stoned to death,' I'll go. But just this one thing, I beseech you from the bottom of my heart, don't ask me?" He regarded her in wrathful amazement. So accustomed had he become to her unconditional obedience, that this explosion in her of a spark of resistance was incomprehensible to him. Was his power over her, that he had imagined unlimited, thus suddenly to end? Surely this woman had of her own accord made herself his body-slave? She had sold herself body and soul to his house, and therefore it was unpardonable presumption in her to assert unexpectedly that she had a will of her own. The blood mounted hotly to his head, and his eyes flashed. "You shall!--I say you _shall_!" She retreated and shrank against the wall. From the dark background her eyes shone out at him like a persecuted wild-cat's. "I won't," she muttered. All the inherited brutality of the feudal master awoke in him. The wine, too, was doing its work. He sprang on her, and caught her by the breast. The buttons of her jacket burst beneath his violent attack, and her bare bosom gleamed forth. He transfixed her with the intensity of his gaze. "Shall I throttle her, or shall I kiss her?" he asked himself, and fumbled for her throat. Then in her deadly terror she made a counter-attack. Her hands were fastened in his shoulders like iron rivets. It needed a gathering up of all his strength to withstand their muscular pressure. A noiseless struggle began. It lasted a minute, and yet seemed to be no nearer its end. Embittered and desperate at first as a wrestle for life and death, it became eventually a sort of game. The combatants apparently had lost sight of what it was they were struggling for. His eyes, bloodshot and wild, sought hers. Her bosom, wet with perspiration, pressed hard against his. Their breathing mingled. Tightly locked in each other's arms they staggered and swayed to and fro. He pressed her in the back of her knee, but she did not yield, and with renewed vigour tried to draw him down to her. For one second in their delirious grappling they gazed dreamily into each other's eyes. Then she vibrated from head to foot, and in the midst of the conflict laid her cheek caressingly on the arm that was raised against her. He saw the action, he saw how her eyes hung on his face with melting solicitude--saw the beautiful dishevelled head droop like a broken flower. "If you are cursed, why should it be for nothing?" And as the thought flashed through him, he bent over her with a sigh, and kissed her on the mouth.