t when he told her to eat. Now he finished
in silence. She saw him glance at his watch. Her heart seemed scarcely
to stir in her breast; then slowly it began to beat, swifter and
swifter, hammering wildly. He had said that she was going out with him;
what he promised to do, she realized again, he would do, if it were
humanly possible. She wanted to run, run anywhere, just to be lost to
him. And yet she stood stock-still and rigid, while her heart hastened
and leaped and her mind sought to grasp the thing to do. She must go
with him, do what he told her like a slave, as he had said, or he would
make her. Her reason said directly: "You will go without a word." And
yet, when he arose to his feet and knocked his pipe out and looked at
her, her reason fled before the flood of the passionate wilfulness of
the old Gloria, and she cried shrilly:

"I won't! I won't! I am not your slave and I am not going to jump at
your bidding! You can't make me; you shan't make me. _I won't!_"

He had hoped for better than this. He came closer and looked intently
into her eyes, seeking to measure what endurance and steadfastness and
stubbornness were hers. But her eyes showed him only glimpses of a
storm-tossed soul.

"I will make you," he said harshly. "So help me God, Gloria, I will make
you. And I am through talking; I am sick of talk. Come with me."

She drew back and back in white-lipped fury.

"You don't _dare_...."

"Listen to me! We are down to bare elementals now; can't you see it? It
is no question of what we'd like to do or dislike. It is a question of
life and death. If to let you have your way were anything other than
suicide, I'd let you have it. If I thought that you would listen to
reason, I'd stop to reason with you. But as things are, I've got nothing
left me but tell you what to do; and you've got to do as I say."

"My life is my own, to do with it as I please. I do not please to obey
your commands."

Her tortured heart surged up in wild triumph as he turned; it sank
sickly as he came back. He had a piece of rope in his hand, the heavy
half-inch rope which had served to tie a horse.

"You would tie me!" she gasped. "Me!"

"No," he said tersely. "As though you were any other fractious animal
refusing discipline when refusal means death, I am going to whip you!"

"God!" screamed Gloria. "Oh, my God!"

For again he but said simply the thing which he meant to do. And she
knew. Yet the consummation was monstrous, un