"You know what I mean, what I want," he was muttering. "That sweet young-thing innocence is all right in its place but that place is not here alone in the mountains with a man."
"Man!" she burst out scathingly. "You, a man! Why, you wretched little beast!"
But Gratton, his brain reeling with hot fancy, came on.
"You were afraid of King. You said that he made you do what he wanted. What about me? You are going to do what I tell you. I ...By God, I will make you! Beast, you call me? No more beast than any other man. I have wanted you all these years. You have wanted me, or you would not have been so glad to see me. Only a few days ago you were ready to marry me! And now ..."
His arms groped for her. Gloria swept up a dead pine limb that lay by the fire and swung it in both hands and struck him full across the face. He reeled back and stood, half in the shadow, his shoulders to the rock wall, his hands to his face.
"You beast!" she panted. "You cowardly, contemptible beast."
From the way in which he brought his hand down and looked at it and laid it back upon his lips she knew that his mouth was bleeding. And she read in the gesture and in the man's whole cringing attitude that the danger of any physical violence from him was past and done with. In the grip of his passion, ugly as it was, he had risen somewhat from his essential weakness; in the moment he had at least thought of himself as a conqueror. Now he was again what he always really was at heart, a contemptible coward.
An absolutely new sense of elation sang through Gloria's blood. She was fully mistress of the situation, and had found within her an unguessed strength. Physically superb at all times because nature had richly gifted her, now she was magnificent.
"Mr. Gratton," she said swiftly, "you have made a mistake. Mr. King has never offered me violence of that sort. Remember that, though we are alone, and in the mountains, I am the same Gloria Gaynor that you have known. And be sure that you treat me as such."
He nursed his battered lips and stared at her. The blow had dazed him. Slowly, as his mind cleared, there dawned in it the realization that he had made a mistake. The stick was still in her hands; a shiver ran through him. His desire went out of him.