iron vice.

'What do you mean?'

'There is no need to be agitated. I am making you an eminently desirable
offer of marriage.'

She sank helplessly into her chair. Because she had refused to think of
the future, it had never struck her that the time must come when it would
be necessary to leave Haddo or to throw in her lot with his definitely.
She was seized with revulsion. Margaret realized that, though an odious
attraction bound her to the man, she loathed and feared him. The scales
fell from her eyes. She remembered on a sudden Arthur's great love and
all that he had done for her sake. She hated herself. Like a bird at its
last gasp beating frantically against the bars of a cage, Margaret made a
desperate effort to regain her freedom. She sprang up.

'Let me go from here. I wish I'd never seen you. I don't know what you've
done with me.'

'Go by all means if you choose,' he answered.

He opened the door, so that she might see he used no compulsion, and
stood lazily at the threshold, with a hateful smile on his face. There
was something terrible in his excessive bulk. Rolls of fat descended from
his chin and concealed his neck. His cheeks were huge, and the lack of
beard added to the hideous nakedness of his face. Margaret stopped as she
passed him, horribly repelled yet horribly fascinated. She had an immense
desire that he should take her again in his arms and press her lips with
that red voluptuous mouth. It was as though fiends of hell were taking
revenge upon her loveliness by inspiring in her a passion for this
monstrous creature. She trembled with the intensity of her desire. His
eyes were hard and cruel.

'Go,' he said.

She bent her head and fled from before him. To get home she passed
through the gardens of the Luxembourg, but her legs failed her, and
in exhaustion she sank upon a bench. The day was sultry. She tried to
collect herself. Margaret knew well the part in which she sat, for in the
enthusiastic days that seemed so long gone by she was accustomed to come
there for the sake of a certain tree upon which her eyes now rested.
It had all the slim delicacy of a Japanese print. The leaves were slender
and fragile, half gold with autumn, half green, but so tenuous that the
dark branches made a pattern of subtle beauty against the sky. The hand
of a draughtsman could not have fashioned it with a more excellent
skill. But now Margaret could take no pleasure in its grace. She felt
a heartrending pang