"Don't touch me!" he said, with an utterance like the cut of a lash,
darting from her, and changing from pink to white and back again,
as if his whole frame were tingling with the pain of the sting.
He wheeled round to the other side of the room and stood opposite to her,
with the tips of his fingers in his pockets and his head thrown back,
looking fiercely not at Rosamond but at a point a few inches away
from her.
She was keenly offended, but the Signs she made of this were such
as only Lydgate was used to interpret. She became suddenly quiet
and seated herself, untying her hanging bonnet and laying it down with
her shawl. Her little hands which she folded before her were very cold.
It would have been safer for Will in the first instance to have taken
up his hat and gone away; but he had felt no impulse to do this;
on the contrary, he had a horrible inclination to stay and shatter
Rosamond with his anger. It seemed as impossible to bear the fatality
she had drawn down on him without venting his fury as it would be
to a panther to bear the javelin-wound without springing and biting.
And yet--how could he tell a woman that he was ready to curse her?
He was fuming under a repressive law which he was forced to acknowledge:
he was dangerously poised, and Rosamond's voice now brought the
decisive vibration.
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