There are few greater trials to a man's dignity than vituperation from
the lips of a woman. She walked towards him, clumsily, menacingly and
raised her hand as if to strike him.

Seymour Michael's brown face turned yellow beneath her blazing anger.

"Sit down!" he commanded, "and don't make a fool of yourself."

He was mean enough to pay her back in her own coin--the paltry,
loud-ringing coin which is all that a woman has.

"I do not mean to wrangle," he said coolly; "but I may as well tell you
now that I never cared a jot for you. I was laughing at you in my sleeve
all the time. I did not want you but your money. I concluded that the
money would be too dear at the price, so I determined to throw you over.
The way I chose to do it was as good as any other, because it saved me
the trouble of writing to you."

Anna Agar had obeyed him. She was sitting down in a stiff-backed
arm-chair, looking stupidly at the pattern of the carpet as if it were
something new to her. Between physical pain and mental excitement she
was beginning to wander. She was the sort of woman to lose control over
her mind with a temperature of one hundred and one.

Michael looked keenly at her. He had a racial terror of physical ailment.
He saw that something was wrong, but his knowledge went no further. He
had never seen a woman faint, so limited had been his experience of the
sex.