can do it."

He exclaimed:

"No, you can't."--His voice had a note of which he was unconscious, a
note that increased the girl's fear of him.--"Not unless you let me take
you. And I suppose you'd sooner die than put up with another hour of
me!--The sands are dangerous. You can ask them."

He nodded towards the men in the distance.

She put a force on herself, and smiled. "Why shouldn't you take me? But
go and look at the inn first--please!--I'm very tired. Then come and
report."

She settled herself on a seat, and drew a little white shawl about her.
From its folds her small face looked up softened and beseeching.

He lingered--his mind half doubt, half violence, He meant to force her to
listen to him--either now, or in the morning. For all her scorn, she
should know, before they parted, something of this misery that burnt in
him. And he would say, too, all that it pleased him to say of that
priest-ridden fool at Bannisdale.

She seemed so tiny, so fragile a thing as he looked down upon her. An
ugly sense of power came to consciousness in him. Coupled with despair,
indeed! For it was her very delicacy, her gentlewoman's
grace--maddeningly plain to _him_ through all the stains of the steel
works--that made hope impossible, that thrust him down as her inferior
forever.