He sprang after her.
"You are leaving me!" he cried horribly.
She walked straight on, neither quickening nor slackening her pace
nor swerving, although his body began unsteadily to intercept hers.
He kept beside her.
"Don't! Isabel!" he prayed out of his agony. "Don't leave me like
this--!"
She walked on and reached the steps of the veranda. Crying out in
his longing he threw his arms around her and held her close.
"You must not! You shall not! Do you know what you are doing,
Isabel?"
She made not the least reply, not the least effort to extricate
herself. But she closed her eyes and shuddered and twisted her
body away from him as a bird of the air bends its neck and head as
far as possible from a repulsive captor; and like the heart of such
a bird, he could feel the throbbing of her heart.
Her mute submission to his violence stung him: he let her go. She
spread out her arms as though in a rising flight of her nature and
the shawl, tossed backward from her shoulders, fell to the ground:
it was as if she cast off the garment he had touched. Then she
went quickly up the steps. Before she could reach the door he
confronted her again; he pressed his back against it. She
stretched out her hand and rang the bell. He stepped aside very
quickly--proudly. She entered, closing and locking noiselessly the
door that no sound might reach the servant she had summoned. As
she did so she heard him try the knob and call to her in an
undertone of last reproach and last entreaty:
"_Isabel!--Isabel!--Isabel_!"
Hurrying through the hall, she ran silently up the stairs to her
room and shut herself in.
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