even-stroke to do a man to death, I warrant you my
lady's flashing eyes would have crisped me to a cinder where I stood
fumbling with one hand behind me for the latch of the slammed door.
Scorn, indignation, outraged maiden modesty, all these thrust at me like
air-drawn daggers; and it needed not her, "Fie, for shame, Captain
Ireton!--and you would call yourself a gentleman!" to set me afire with
prinklings of abashment.

What could I say or do? The accursed door-latch would not find itself to
let me fly; and as for excusings, I could not tell her that her own
father had thrust me thus upon her. Yet, had she let me be, I hope I
should have had the wit to find the door fastening and the grace to run
away; in truth, I had the latch in hand when she lashed out at me again,
and my tingling shame began to give place to that master-devil of
passion which is never more than half whipped into subjection in the
best of us.

"How are you better than the man you warned me of?" she cried. And
then, in a tempest of grief: "Oh! you would not leave me the respect I
bore you; you must even rob me of that to fling it down and trample it
under foot!"

Figure to yourselves, my dears, that I was wholly blameless in this
unhappy breaking and entering, and so, mayhap, you may find excuse for
me. For now, though I could have gone, I would not. Her glorious beauty,
heightened beyond compare by the passionate outburst, held me
spellbound. And at my ear the master-devil whispered: She is your wedded
wife; yours for better or worse, till death part you. Who has a better
right to look upon her thus?

So it was that the love-madness came upon me again, and that thin
veneering wherewith the Christian centuries have so painfully overlaid
the natural man in us was cracked and riven, and the barbarian which
lies but skin-deep underneath bestirred himself and winked and blinked
himself awake in giant might, as did the primal man when he rose up to
look about him for his mate.

Before I knew what I would do, I was beside her, and honor, or what may
stand therefor betwixt a man and his friend, was flung away. But when I
would have crushed her sweetness in my arms she went upon her knees to
me.... Ah, God! she knelt to me as she had knelt to that other would-be
ravisher and begged me for mine own honor's sake to bethink me of what I
would do.

"Oh, Monsieur John! be merciful as you are strong!" she pleaded. "Think
what it will mean to you, and how