"Have you ever seen your master?" asked the girl slowly.
"I'll want to die when I see that," he said simply.
Suddenly she clenched her hands and sat straight up.
"It's got to be stopped," she said hotly. "It's all nonsense, and I'm going to see that you're both stopped."
"You can't stop me."
She was not angry, but very curious. It was, in fact, difficult to be angry with a man who kept his eyes upon her with a look of mortal hunger, mortal stillness.
"Of course," she said, without smiling, "I'm not a fighting man."
It was as though, when words failed him, he relied upon a gesture to take their place. She followed the glint of his eyes and the movement of his hand, and was sorry she had made that last remark. Too late she knew she had precipitated the trouble. She would have stopped him, but it was like raising a hand to halt an avalanche. She felt lost, as though a horse had taken the bit in his teeth and was whirling her on into danger, out of control. The emotion which had been in the quivering gesture of his hand and in the glint of his eyes was stamped freely on his whole face now. It was in his pallor, in the deep lines beside the mouth, in his very deep breathing, and, above all, it flowed into the quality of his voice, which did not rise in pitch or in volume, but which took on a peculiar edge—something that went to her heart.
"Four days ago," he said, "you could have taken me in the hollow of your hand. I would have come to you and gone from you at a nod. That time is about to end."
He paused a little, and looked at her in such a manner that she was frightened, but it was a pleasant fear.
