"What!"

"Dear, _are_ you?"

"What do you know about it?"

"From the little I saw outside the house this morning."

He grasped her arms so tightly that he hurt her. "Lord! If you mean that
I ought to grin at him, as he does at me, the snake in the grass--"

"I don't mean that, of course. But I do think you shouldn't allow
yourself to look as if you wanted to knock him down."

"There's nothing in life that would give me greater satisfaction!"

He relaxed his grasp on her arms, and she let them drop from his
shoulders. She turned aside, with a little droop of the head, as if she
felt it useless to argue with one so stubbornly set on his own
destruction.

He looked after her. "A big brute, am I not? Didn't know me before, did
you? Thought I was all fine, warm heart and blarneying words. Well, I'm
not. When a thing like this gets hold of me I'm--well, I won't shock your
pretty ears by putting it into words."

He walked out of the room, leaving her standing looking after him with a
strange expression on her face. Before she had moved, however, the door
burst open again, and he was striding across the floor to her, to seize