My mother-in-law evidently knows when to stop. She eyed me steadily for a moment.
"Dicky," she said at last, and her manner of sweeping me out of the universe was superb, "in five minutes I wish to speak to you in my room."
"All right, mother." Dicky's tone was unsteady, and as his mother's door closed behind her I prepared myself to face his increased anger.
"How dared you to speak to my mother in that fashion?" he demanded hoarsely.
When I am most angry, a diabolically aggravating spirit seems to possess me. I could feel it enmeshing me.
"Please don't be melodramatic, Dicky," I said mockingly, "and if you have quite finished, I will go."
"No, you won't, at least not until I have told you something," he snarled.
He sprang to my side, and seized my shoulder in a cruel grip that made me wince.
"We'll just have this out once for all," he said. "If you go out of this door you go out for good. I don't care for the role of complacent husband."
The insult left me deadly cold. I knew, of course, that Dicky was so blinded by rage and jealousy that he had no idea of what he was saying. But ungovernable as I knew his temper to be, he had passed the limits of my forebearance.