To him, there was nothing more in her refusal than her preference for the artist.
That this young woman--to him, an unschooled girl of the hills--whom he had so long marked as his own, should give herself to another, and so scornfully turn from him, was an affront that he could not brook.

The very vigor of her wrath, as she stood before him,--her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed, and her beautiful body quivering with the vehemence of her passionate outburst,--only served to fan the flame of his desire; while her stinging words provoked his bestial mind to an animal-like rage.

With a muttered oath and a threat, he started toward her.
But the woman who faced him now, with full understanding, was very different from the timid, frightened girl who had not at first understood.
With a business-like movement that was the result of Brian Oakley's careful training, her hand dropped to her hip and was raised again.
James Rutlidge stopped, as though against an iron bar.

In the blue eyes that looked at him, now, over the dark barrel of the revolver, he read no uncertainty of purpose.

The small hand that had drawn the weapon with such ready swiftness, was as steady as though at target practice.
Instinctively, the man half turned, throwing up his arm as if to shield his face from a menacing blow.