His hold became cruel in an instant. He forced her hands behind her,
holding her imprisoned in his arms. He tilted her head back. His eyes
shone down into hers like the eyes of a tiger that clutches its prey. He
quelled her resistance by sheer brutality.
"I have warned you!" he said; and she knew instinctively that he would
have no mercy.
"How can I marry you?" she gasped in desperation. "I am engaged
to--another man!"
She saw his face change. Instantly she knew that she had made a mistake.
The ferocity in his eyes turned to devilish malice.
"You will marry me yet!" he said.
"But you will come to hate me some day!" she cried, clutching at straws.
"As--as I hate you to-day!"
His look appalled her, his lips were close to hers.
"If I do," he said, with a fiendish smile, "I shall find a remedy. But
so long as you hate me, I shall not grow tired of you!"
And with that he suddenly and savagely pressed his lips to hers.
XI
THE TIGER'S PUNISHMENT
That single kiss was to Ernestine the climax and zenith of horror. It
seemed to sear and blister her very soul with an anguish of repulsion
that would scar her memory for all time. She retained her consciousness,
but she never knew by what lightning stroke she was set free. She was
too dazed, too blinded, by her horror to realise. But suddenly the cruel
grip that had her helpless was gone.
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