beating against him
with might and anger, there was the feminine sense of injury by
outrageous violence; but with it all there was also the natural woman's
delight in the main strength of the natural man, that could kill her in
an instant if he chose, but that could lift her to itself as a little
child and surround her and protect her against the whole world.

"Please--please!" she cried again, covering his fierce eyes and white
face with her hands and trying to push him away. The tone was pathetic
in its appeal, and it touched him. His arms relaxed, tightened again
with a sort of spasm, and then she found herself beside him on her feet.
A long silence followed.

Gloria sank into a chair, glanced at him and saw that his face was
turned away, looked down again and then watched him. His chest heaved
once or twice, as though he had run a short sharp race. One hand grasped
the back of a chair as he stood up. All at once, without looking at her,
he went to the window and stood there, looking out, but seeing nothing.
The soft damp wind made the panes of glass rattle. Still neither broke
the silence. Then he came to her and stood before her, looking down,
and she looked down, too, and would not see him. She was more afraid of
him now than when he had lifted her from her feet, and her heart beat
fast. She wondered what he would say, for she supposed that he meant to
ask her forgiveness, and she was right.

[Illustration: "Gloria--forgive me!"--Vol. II., p. 50.]

"Gloria--forgive me," he said.

She looked up, a little fear of him still in her face.

"How can I?" she asked, but in her voice there was forgiveness already.

Her womanly instinct, though she was so young, told her that the fault
was hers, and that considering the provocation it was not a great
one--what were a few kisses, even such kisses as his, in a lifetime? And
she had tempted him beyond all bounds and repented of it. Before the
storm she had raised in him, her fancied woes sank away and seemed
infinitely small. She knew that she had worked herself up to emotion and
tears, though not half sure of what she was saying, that she had
exaggerated all she knew and suggested all she did not know, that she
had almost been acting a part to satisfy something in her which she
could not understand. And by her acting she had roused the savage truth
in her very face and it had swept down everything before it. She had not
guessed such possibilities. Before the tempest of