And he was turning half contemptuously away, when she again faced him with flashing eyes.
"Well, hear me! I accept; I leave here at once, to join my own people, my own friends--those who understand me--put what construction on it that you choose.

Do your worst; you cannot do more to separate us than you have done just now." She left him, and ran up the steps with a singular return of her old occasional nymph-like nimbleness--the movement of a woman who had never borne children--and a swish of her long skirts that he remembered for many a day after, as she disappeared in the corridor.

He remained looking after her--indignant, outraged, and unconvinced.

There was a rattling at the gate.
He remembered he had locked it.

He opened it to the flushed pink cheeks and dancing eyes of Susy.