you in dreams. But all the same you're my wife, and I tell you now,
you sha'n't be handled by a man like Palgrave."

They were in the middle of the floor. There were people all round
them, thickly. They were obliged to keep going in that lunatic
movement or be run down. What a way and in what a place to bare a
bleeding heart!

For the first time since he had answered to her call and found her
standing clean-cut against the sky, Martin held Joan in his arms.
His joy in doing so was mixed with rage and jealousy. It had been
worse than a blow in the mouth suddenly to see her, of whom he had
thought as fast asleep in what was only the mere husk of home,
dancing with a man like Palgrave.

And her nearness maddened him. All the starved and pent-up passion
that was in him flamed and blazed. It blinded him and buzzed in his
ears. He held her so tight and so hungrily that she could hardly
breathe. She was his, this girl. She had called him, and he had
answered, and she was his wife. He had the right to her by law and
nature. He adored her and had let her off and tried to be patient
and win his way to her by love and gentleness. But with his lips
within an inch of her sweet, impertinent face, and the scent of her
hair in his brain, and the wound that she had opened again sapping
his blood, he held her to his heart and charged the crowd to the
beat of the music, like a man intoxicated, like a man heedless of
his surroundings. He didn't give a curse who overheard what he said,
or saw the look in his eyes. She had turned him down, this half-
wife, on the plea of weariness; and as soon as he had left the house
to go and eat his heart out in the hub of that swarming lonely city,