"Oh, what children! What babies!"
While Sophy merely sat resigned, waiting for the hurricane to subside.
Loring conquered, of course. He strode up to Amaldi and dropped the ring into his hand, while Belinda sank down on a distant sofa, gasping out:
"You're a brute, Morry!... I hate you!"
Loring gave a short laugh, and strolled out of the room.
Amaldi also took his leave in a frame of mind that may be described as bewildered.
XXX
But this occasion, which had led Amaldi to suspect that Sophy did not realise the state of things between her husband and Belinda, was the cause of her first awakening to something unusual in their relationship. It was not their boisterous romping which had done this. Sophy was too used to the fondness of Young America for indulging in this sort of "high-jinks" to notice particularly the rough-and-tumble of Belinda's passage with Loring.
She had been troubled by the disgust which she felt underneath Amaldi's quiet manner. She winced from what she divined to be his point of view—the point of view of a cultured Athenian watching the holiday pranks of barbarians. This mortified and disturbed her. But she had only regretted the bad taste of the scuffle; it had not revealed to her anything deeper. No—it was Loring's curt laugh as he turned away from Belinda's cry of "I hate you!"—it was something in Belinda's voice and look as she gave this cry that had startled Sophy. In the girl's voice and look there had been such concentrated, vibrating passion; in Loring's laugh she had heard an echo of the love-laughs of her own wooing. There was a certain note of secure mockery in it—a threat as of something controlled—a suppressed secret triumph, that brought the past giddily upon her.