Page:The Surakarta (1913).djvu/161

Rh determinedly pitted against a feared adversary.

"However, I make it quite plain, I think."

"Not quite," he deliberately forced her on.

She bit her lip, which whitened under her small teeth. "You are ungenerous. Yesterday, when you threatened to prevent me from receiving the emerald, I answered you with—with a sort of challenge, did I not?"

He studied her. "Exactly."

"To-day I withdraw that challenge, Mr. Hereford. If what I said yesterday has piqued you into doing something which otherwise you would not have done, I"

She flushed painfully; but he did not feel that sense of triumph which comes to a man in the presence of a woman who concedes something against her will, which is not