It was not the cry alone which unnerved him. He could see her eyes now. They were very close and he could look directly into them. They were no longer glazed and uncomprehending. They were trained on his face with a blazing intensity of hatred and loathing. It was horrible. It shamed him. He himself began to tremble and turn pale. Not only had his ardor failed to arouse her, it had stirred her to the kind of response that he most dreaded--anger, contempt, revulsion. She was no longer even frightened. He could see that she despised him too much to be afraid of him. He revolted her, sickened her. But strongest of all was the hatred--a blazing hatred such as he had never before seen in the eyes of a woman. It was not even a womanly hate. It was the kind of hate that could crush and destroy. She was clubbing him with it, using it as a gladiator would use a mace--a mace encircled with cruel, blood-drawing spikes. He had no defense against such contempt, such hatred. It unmanned him, so that he cowered back from her as if she had turned suddenly into a savage beast with bared fangs, slowly pacing about in front of him, and waiting for his knees to give way before closing in for the kill. The words she flung at him were the worst of all. He had hoped never to hear such words spoken by any woman. But from her lips they seared all that remained of his pride, so that his image of himself as a lover, accomplished and irresistible, shriveled and blackened and fell apart, like a leaf on a burning tree. Her words were destructive to more than his pride. They even made him doubt the genuineness of his past triumphs, his success with Martian women. Had his fierce lovemaking not been what Martian women wanted? Had he been less than an artist in love? Had they submitted to him only because of his high station, while secretly holding him in contempt? If they had spoken such words as were coming now from the lips of the woman before him would their voices have rung out with the same biting contempt? He could imagine a Martian woman saying such things to him. He could picture it now. But the words of the slender woman before him were infinitely more cruel and vindictive and even as he listened to them he could feel his virility ebbing away. They were terrible and crushing words and they burned into his brain like a firing rod glowing white-hot. "If you touch me again I will kill myself! I will find a way! If only you knew how loathsome you are--what a beast thing you are! I would rather be embraced by a toad! I do not know where you came from or what you are. But you are inhuman beasts, cruel and cold and merciless. We will fight you until every man and woman on Earth is dead. If necessary, we will all die. But we will fight you. You can be sure of that. Oh, you can be very sure! You killed my husband! He had every right to defend himself. He saw what you did to the man who fled."