"Suppose he did hold my hand and--and kiss me, Jude Lauzoon, you'd like to do the same yourself, now wouldn't you?"
She was ignorantly testing her weak, woman's weapon on the man's metal.
Jude felt the mist rising in his eyes that once before that day had hid this girl and Gaston from his sight. Like a mad mockery, too, Lola's lark song sounded above the rush of blood that made him giddy. He got to his feet and staggered around the table. He held to it, not so much to steady himself as to guide him, but as he neared the girl the blindness passed, and the tormenting song stopped--he stood in an awful silence, and a white, hot light.
"Yes, by God, I do want to, and if yer that kind I'll take--my share and chance along with the rest of 'em."
It was his own voice, loud and brutal, that smote the better part of him that stood afar and alone; a something quite different from the beast who spoke, and which felt a mad interest in wondering how she would take the words.
No clash of steel or dash of icy water could have had the effect those quiet words had, combined with the immovable calm out of which they came.
The instinct of frightened womanhood was alive. If she could not down the beast in the man by unflinching show of courage--she was lost.
They eyed each other for an instant--then Jude backed away and dropped into the chair across the table.
Still, like animal and tamer they measured each other from the safer distance. Presently the girl spoke, laying all the blame upon him for the fright and suffering.
"What right have you, Jude Lauzoon, to come here insulting me?"
"What right had you," he blurted out, "to make me think you was that--that sort?"
"I didn't make you think it--you thought it because you--wanted to think it--it was in you."
The beast was quelled now, and a stifled sob rose to the boyish throat.
"I--I didn't want to think it--God knows I didn't, Joyce, it was that that drove me mad."
"Can a man only think bad when he sees what he doesn't understand?"
Revulsion of feeling was making Joyce desperate. While her new power brought her a delirious joy, it also, she was beginning to understand, brought a terror she had never conceived before. She wished the house were nearer the other human habitations.