ed forward, and grasped her wrist, and, with a slight motion,
forced her upon her knees. "If you are pleasure I'm not," he challenged.

"You are hurting my arm," she said coldly. His grip tightened, and a small
grimace crossed her lips. "Let go," she demanded; and then a swift passion
shrilled her voice. "Let go, you are crushing my wrist. Damn you to hell!
if you spoil my wrist I'll kill you."

For a moment, as he held her, she reminded Gordon of a venomous snake; he
had never seen such a lithe, wicked hatred in any other human being. "You
are a gentle object," he satirized her, loosening his hold.

She rose slowly and stood fingering her wrist. The emotion died from her
countenance. "You see," she explained, "my body is all I have to take me
out of this," she motioned to the slumbering water, the towering range,
"and I can't afford to have it spoiled. You wouldn't like me if I were
lame or crooked. Men don't. The religious squashes can say all they like
about the soul, but a woman's body is the only really important thing to
her. No one bothers about your soul, but they judge your figure across the
street."

"Yours hasn't done you much good."

"It will," she returned somberly, "it must--real lace and wine and ease."
She came very close to him; he could feel the faint jarring of her heart,
the moisture of her breath. "And you could get them for me. I would make
you mad with sensation."

He kissed her again and again, crushing her to him. She abandoned herself
to his arms, but she was as untouched, as impersonal, as a stuffed woman
of cool satin. In the end he voluntarily released her.

"You wouldn't take fire from a pine knot," he said unsteadily.

Her deft hands rearranged her hat. "Some day a man will murder me," she
replied in level tones; "perhaps I'll get a thrill from that." Her voice
grew as cutting as a surgeon's polished knife. "Please don't think I'm the
kind of woman men take out in the woods and kiss. You may have discovered
that I don't like kissing. I'm going to be honester still--last year, when
you were mending the minister's ice house, and hadn't a dollar, I wasn't
the smallest bit interested in you; and this year I am.--Not on account of
the money itself," she was careful to add, "but because of you and the
money together. Don't you see--it changed you; it's perfectly right that
it should, and that I should recognize it."

"That sounds fair enough," he agreed. "Now the question is, what are we