“I mean just that,” he answered, bending over her with eyes that gave her the feeling of a physical touch. “I will prevent your leaving this room until you have honestly and fairly spoken to me, and have either confirmed or denied what your eyes plainly said to me yesterday.” “You are cowardly and cruel!” she cried. “You are taking a mean advantage of me! I was ill yesterday. I was half unconscious--” “You may have been ill,” he interrupted. “I know indeed that you were, and that physical weakness may have led to self-betrayal; but you were not unconscious. Far from it. You were never more acutely conscious in your life than during those long moments when you looked at me with love.” “I deny it!” she cried angrily. “Useless!” he answered. “It is not to be denied.” She tried to draw farther away, but the barricade of easels stopped her. Then he himself stepped backward, and put some feet of space between them. “I cannot bear to see you shrink from me,” he said. “You will have to forgive a persistence that may seem to you brutal; but fate has put this opportunity into my hands, and I’d be a fool not to use it.” “And what do you expect to get from it?” she asked. “An answer in plain words to this question, Do you, or do you not, love me?” “I do not!” she cried hotly; but her breast was heaving so, her heart was throbbing so, that she could scarcely catch her breath; and she felt that not for all the world dared she look him in the face. “Your eyes yesterday contradicted your words of to-day,” he said. “I will not be content until I have had both. So help me God, you are not going to trifle with me now! I will make you look at me, and confirm with your eyes the words you have just spoken, or I’ll have you for my wife again!” He caught her in his arms, and drew her close against him. She opened her mouth as if to scream, but he laid his palm upon it, not forgetting, for all his strength, to touch her gently. “Oh, my darling, my precious one,” he said, “don’t call out for protection from me, as if I were your enemy! Surely you know that I would die by torture before I would hurt you--body or soul. But something--a wicked pride, perhaps--is making you struggle against the truth; and, for your sake as well as for my own, I must make a fight for it. Look! I offer you the chance. If you can look me in the face, and say with eyes and lips together, ‘Harold, I do not love you,’ then you are as free as air. If you can do that, I will go, and never cross your path again.” He had taken his hand from her mouth, for fear her panting breaths would cease. He could feel the violent beating of her heart against his side. An overwhelming tenderness and pity for her filled him, and his arm, relaxing its stern pressure, drew her close, with an embrace whose only constraint was that of love. Her ear was very close to him, and he spoke to her in the lowest whispers.