The vague tenderness in her blue eyes vanished; _he_ had done _this_, too!--shamefully, by force, treading mercilessly on the frail bud of friendship--ignoring everything, sacrificing everything to a dull, obstinate determination which he had characterized as duty.
She turned and looked at the man who had done all this, her eyes darkly beautiful, her lips stern.
Duty? He had not considered the duty she owed. He had not respected her promise to bring back what had been intrusted to her. And when the discussion had tired him--when her warnings, pleadings--even her appeals in the name of the first friendship she had ever given--had been ignored, he had coolly used violence.
Yes, violence, although, perhaps, the violence had not been very violent. But it was force--and hateful to her who never before had been obliged to endure the arrogance which her caste only knew how to dispense.
"So brauch' Ich Gewalt!" kept ringing in her ears like a very obsession as she knelt there, sitting back on her own supple limbs, and watching the sleeping man out of beautiful hostile eyes.
_That_ man! That _American_--or Belgian--whatever he was--with his clear grey eyes and his short yellow hair and that mouth of his which could be faintly humorous at times and, at times be so ugly and set--what was there about him that she liked--or rather _had_ liked?
Not his features; they were only passable from an ornamental point of view--not his lean but powerful figure, which resembled many other figures she had seen in England--not his manner particularly--at least she had seen more deferential attitudes, more polish of the courtly and continental sort, more empressement.
_What_ was it she liked,--had _once_ liked in this man? Nothing! _Nothing!_--the tears suddenly glimmered in her eyes and she winked them dry, angrily.
And to think--to remember in years to come that she--_she_ had pleaded with that man in the name of friendship--and of something _more_ than friendship!--The hot colour mantled face and throat and she covered her eyes in a sudden agony of mortification.
For a few moments she remained so, then her hands fell, helplessly again.
And, as she knelt there looking at him through the increasing daylight, suddenly her eyes narrowed, and her set face grew still and intent.