"I say you're not going! I'm tired of your eternal selfishness!"
"I only want to go home." Two wrathful tears started from her eyes.
"This time you're going to do what I say."
Slowly her body straightened: her head went back in a gesture of infinite scorn.
"I hate you!" Her low words were expelled like venom through her clenched teeth. "Oh, let me go! Oh, I hate you!" She tried to jerk herself away but he only grasped the other arm. "I hate you! I hate you!"
At Gloria's fury his uncertainty returned, but he felt that now he had gone too far to give in. It seemed that he had always given in and that in her heart she had despised him for it. Ah, she might hate him now, but afterward she would admire him for his dominance.
The approaching train gave out a premonitory siren that tumbled melodramatically toward them down the glistening blue tracks. Gloria tugged and strained to free herself, and words older than the Book of Genesis came to her lips."Oh, you brute!" she sobbed. "Oh, you brute! Oh, I hate you! Oh, you brute! Oh--"
On the station platform other prospective passengers were beginning to turn and stare; the drone of the train was audible, it increased to a clamor. Gloria's efforts redoubled, then ceased altogether, and she stood there trembling and hot-eyed at this helpless humiliation, as the engine roared and thundered into the station.
Low, below the flood of steam and the grinding of the brakes came her voice: "Oh, if there was one man here you couldn't do this! You couldn't do this! You coward! You coward, oh, you coward!"
Anthony, silent, trembling himself, gripped her rigidly, aware that faces, dozens of them, curiously unmoved, shadows of a dream, were regarding him. Then the bells distilled metallic crashes that were like physical pain, the smoke-stacks volleyed in slow acceleration at the sky, and in a moment of noise and gray gaseous turbulence the line of faces ran by, moved off, became indistinct--until suddenly there was only the sun slanting east across the tracks and a volume of sound decreasing far off like a train made out of tin thunder. He dropped her arms. He had won.
Now, if he wished, he might laugh. The test was done and he had sustained his will with violence. Let leniency walk in the wake of victory.
"We'll hire a car here and drive back to Marietta," he said with fine reserve.