You,
I see, are following faithfully his footsteps. I know you, and the creed
of your kind--as I knew your father before you. No girl of innocent beauty
is safe from you. Your unclean mind is as incapable of believing in
virtue, as you are helpless in the grip of your own insane lust."
The man was stung to fury by her cutting words. "Take your ugly face out
of my sight," he said brutally.
Fearlessly, she drew a step nearer. "It is because I am a woman that I
have this ugly face, James Rutlidge." She touched her disfigured
cheek--"These scars are the marks of the beast that rules you, sir, body
and soul. Leave this place, or, as there is a God, I'll tell a tale that
will forbid you ever showing your own evil countenance in public, again."
Something in her eyes and in her manner, as she spoke, caused the
man--beside himself with rage, as he was--to draw back. Some mysterious
force that made itself felt in her bold words told him that hers was no
idle threat. A moment they stood face to face, in the edge of the shadowy
orange grove--the man of the world, prominent in circles of art and
culture; and the woman whose natural loveliness was so distorted into a
hideous mask of ugliness.
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