She sprang to her feet with a swift sidewise movement that made
her limp young body melt into a series of curves; and, standing at bay as
it were, looked at him with a little frown.
He rose as quickly and she liked the set of his jaw bones less and less.
"Are you refusing me outright?" he demanded. "That would be only fair, you
know, if I have no chance."
"Well....I think so. That is--"
"Do you love another man?"
Coquetry flashed back. Nevertheless, she told the exact truth little as she
suspected it.
"I love myself, and youth, and life, and liberty. What is a man in
comparison with all that?"
"This." And before she could make another leap he had her in his arms; and
under the fire of his lips and eyes she lay inert, intoxicated, her first
flash of young passion completely responsive to his.
But only for a moment.
She wrenched herself away, her face livid, her eyes black with fury. She
beat his chest with her fists.
"You! You! How I hate you! To think I should have given that to you...to
think that another man should have been the first to kiss me...I'm in love
with another man, I tell you. Why don't you go? I hate myself and I never
want to lay eyes on you again. Go! Go! Go!"
CHAPTER XV
I
During the retreat from Mons and again in those black days of March,
nineteen-eighteen, Gathbroke's tormented mind snapped from the present and
flashed on its screen so startling a resurrection of himself during those
last dreadful days in San Francisco that for the moment he was unconscious
of the world crashing about him.
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