"You insult me!" she cried, making these violent movements of her whole body that, to him, were unintelligible. "How dare you? You——" The breath choked her.
"Cad," he helped her, so suddenly that another mind not far away might almost have dropped the word purposely into his own. "I am so pained," he added, "so pained." He gazed at her as though he longed to help. "For you, I know, are valuable to him who holds you sacred—to—your husband."
Lady Gleeson simply could not credit her ears. This neat, though unintentional, way of transferring the epithet to her who deserved it, left her speechless. Her fury increased with her inability to express it. She could have struck him, killed him on the spot. Her face changed from white to crimson like some toy with a trick of light inside it. She seemed to emit sparks. She was transfixed. And the shiver that ran through her was, perhaps, for once, both sexual and spiritual at once.
"You insult me," she cried again helplessly. "You insult me!"
"If there was something in you I could work with—help——" he began, his face showing a tender sympathy that enraged her even more. He started suddenly, looking closer into her blazing eyes. "Ah," he said quickly below his breath, "the fire—the little fire!" His expression altered. But Lady Gleeson, full of her grievance, did not catch the words, it seemed.
"—In my tenderest, my most womanly feelings," she choked on, yet noticing the altered expression on his face. "How dare you?" Her voice became shrill and staccato. Then suddenly—mistaking the look in his eyes for shame—she added: "You shall apologize. You shall apologize at once!" She screamed the words. They were the only ones that her outraged feelings found.
"You show yourself, my fire," he was saying softly in his deep resonant voice. "Oh, I see and worship now; I understand a little."
His look astonished her even in the middle of her anger—the pity, kindness, gentleness in it. The bewilderment she did not notice. It was the evident desire to be of service to her, to help and comfort, that infuriated her. The superiority was more than she could stand.
"And on your knees," she yelped; "on your knees, too!"
Drawing herself up, she pointed to the carpet with an air of some tragedy queen to whom a lost self-respect came slowly back. "Down there!" she added, as the gleaming buckle on her shoe indicated the spot. She did not forget to show her pretty stockings as well.