Page:Two Magics.djvu/393

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COVERING END
385

same spirit bore her to the end. "I won't stick a moment more! Haven't I been trying this age to leave you?"

Clement Yule, for all answer, caught her sharply, in her passage, by the arm. "You surrender your rights?" He was for an instant almost terrible.

She quite turned pale with it. "Weren't you ready to surrender yours?"

"I hadn't any, so it was deuced easy. I hadn't paid for them."

Oh that, she let him see,—even though with his continued grasp he might hurt her,—had nothing in it! "Your ancestors had paid: it's the same thing." Erect there in the brightness of her triumph and the force of her logic, she must yet, to anticipate his return, take a stride—like a sudden dip into a gully and the scramble up on the other bank—that put her dignity to the test. "You're just, in a manner, my tenant."

"But how can I treat that as such a mere detail? I'm your tenant on what terms?"

"Oh, any terms—choose them for yourself!" She made an attempt to free her arm—gave it a small vain shake. Then, as if to bribe him to let her go: "You can write me about them."

He appeared to consider it. "To Missoura Top?"