She turned her face away, and the exquisite beauty of her small white ear appealed to him provokingly. He ground his teeth. He could have thrown his arm about her, and crushed the tall, full, womanly figure against him. How superb she was in her mood of hate. The strapped-up wound in his left hand was throbbing and smarting, just as when she had writhed her head free from his furious kisses and bitten him to the bone. He had made her pay richly for her bite. He hugged himself as he remembered.... Now the sting of desire was renewed in him and he eyed her with greediness. Presently he stooped and said in her ear, coaxingly: "Let us be friends! Dine with me at the Rocroy to-night. We will have a box at the Alhambra, and sup again at the Upas. Say you will come, loved one! Will you not, Patrine?" "No!" "No? But I think you mean Yes! Do you not?" "I have said No! Is that not enough?" "You are mad!" he blustered at her—"mad as a March hare!" She answered him: "I have been mad, but I am sane now and I stay so." He said scoffingly: "You may not always remain as you are now!" If he launched a poisoned dart, its meaning glanced aside from her. "Shall you not write to me when I am back in Germany? Not one line? Not one single word? Yet I have a few little notes from you that I particularly value...." "Make the most of them. I shall write no more." And suddenly her hate and loathing of him reached boiling point and ran over. "My God! Can’t you understand that I ask nothing better than never to see nor hear of you again!" "_Grossartig_! You are hellishly conciliatory." His voice was thick and shook with anger. His smile mocked and the look in his eyes was hateful as he pursued in a tone that was now quite gentle and purring: "Just think a bit, my dear! Because—to burn one’s boats behind one—that is not prudent at all!" She did not answer, and he drove on to Hendon, planning fresh assaults upon this unconquerable woman’s pride. *CHAPTER XXV* *THREE MEN IN A CAR*