“You’ve got to listen to me,” he said, shaking her arm as if trying to shake some passion into the set antagonism of her face; “you’ve got to be my wife.” She suddenly seized her umbrella and, turning it toward him, pressed it down between them. The action was so quick and unexpected that the man did not move back, and the ferrule striking him on the cheek, furrowed a long scratch on the smooth skin. A drop of blood rose to the surface. With an oath he seized the umbrella and, tearing it from her grasp, sent it flying into the street. Here the wind snatched it, and its inverted shape, like a large black mushroom, went sweeping forward, tilted and already half full of water, before the angry gusts. Essex tried to keep his own over her, still retaining his hold on her arm. “Come, be reasonable,” he said; “there’s no use angering me for nothing. This is a wet place for lovers to have meetings. Give me my answer, and I swear I’ll not detain you. When will you marry me?” “What’s the good of talking that way? You know perfectly what I’ll say. It will always be the same.” “I’m not so sure of that. I’ve got something to say that may make you change your mind.” He pushed the umbrella back that the light might fall directly on her. It fell on him also. She saw his face under the brim of his soaked hat, shining with rain, pallidly sinister, the trickle of blood on one cheek. “Nothing that you can say will ever make me change my mind. Mr. Essex, I am wet and tired; won’t you, please, let me go?” She tried to eliminate dislike and fear from her voice and spoke with a gentleness that she hoped would soften him. He heard it with a thrill; but it had an exactly contrary effect to what she had desired. “I would like never to let you go. Just to hold you here and look at you. Mariposa, you don’t know what this love is I have for you. It grows with absence, and then when I see you it grows again with the sight of you. It’s eating into me like a poison. I can’t get away from it. You loved me once, why have you changed? What has come over you to take all that out of you? Is it because I made a foolish mistake? I’m ready to do anything you suggest--crawl in the dust, kneel now in the rain, and ask you to forgive it. Don’t be hard and revengeful. It’s not like you. Be kind, be merciful to a man who, if he said what hurt you, has repented it with all his soul ever since. I am ready to give you my whole life to make amends. Say you forgive me. Say you love me.” He was speaking the truth. Passion had outrun cupidity. Mariposa, poor or rich, had become the end and aim of his existence. “It’s not a question of forgiveness,” she answered, seeing he still persisted in the thought that she was hiding her love from wounded pride; “it’s not a question of love. I--I--don’t like you. Can’t you understand that? I don’t like you.” “It’s not true--it’s not true,” he vociferated. “You love me--say you do.”