“This folly must be ended just at this point; and when I ask you a question, Hagar, you are to reply, and not evade it. Tell me, now, the cause of your gloom—tell me at once, without prevarication, for I will know it.” “You _do_ know it,” said she, looking up through her anguished eyes at his calm, stern, yet beautiful face. “You do know it.” “I do _not_ know it, and I wait your answer.” “You _suspect_ it, then?” “I am not given to _suspicion_,” sneered Raymond, “and I want to hear the cause of your sullenness from your own lips. Come, reply!” She relapsed into silence. “Am I to have an answer from you, Hagar?” “Alas! why do you press the question? I am gloomy, I cannot conceal it, but I do not complain—do not _wish_ to complain.” “Of _what_ have you to ‘complain?’” “Nothing.” “‘_Nothing!_’—false, again! for though it is true, in fact, that you _have_ nothing of which to complain, it is false on your lips.” She did not repel this charge, but sat with head bowed, with chin rested on her breast, with clasped hands on her lap, he still standing before her with folded arms. “Why did you not come up to the piano when I beckoned you?” “Because I did not wish to come.” “_You ‘did not wish to come’_—insolent! but passing over the impertinence of your reply, Hagar, _why_ did you ‘not wish to come?’” “I was not wanted.” “I called you.” “Yet I was not needed.” “That was no business of yours; I beckoned you!” “And I am not a slave, to come at your beck!” flashed Hagar, suddenly raising her eyes, blazing with defiance, to meet his steady gaze. “No, you are not a slave, Hagar; you are a proud, fierce woman—yet Hagar, to-morrow, when I call you to my side, _you will come_!” and his hand dropped heavily upon her shoulder. We will drop the curtain here; these scenes are disgraceful, disgusting. * * * * * The next evening they were grouped around the piano again, Rosalia was singing her evening song, Raymond Withers standing at the back of her chair, a little on the right, and Hagar stood on the other side, leaning with her elbow on the end of the piano, her forehead bowed upon the palm of her hand. Rosalia, without raising her eyes from her music, moved the light so that its beams fell more directly upon her notes—its beams fell also upon the countenance of Hagar, exposing a face so ghastly in its pallor, eyes so fierce in their anguish, that Raymond, evidently fearing lest Rosalia should notice her agony of expression, brought her, by a look and gesture, out of the light and into the shade of the background by his side; and passing his arm around her waist, drew her up to him, smiling down in her face, as he whispered, quickly, under his breath— “Be gentle, tender, complying, Hagar, and you shall be happy; be the reverse, be rude, angry, rebellious, and you shall be wretched. Yet I love you, Hagar, and would prefer to make you happy; do not, while I love you, constrain me to deeds of hate.”