"Amaldi!" he stammered at last. "Why, the fellow's sweet on you!"
"Pooh!" said Belinda. "He only flirted about with me a bit to make her jealous...."
"To make ... Sophy ... jealous?"
Loring was talking like a sleep-walker, slowly, with thick utterance.
Belinda began to feel a little uneasy at the very potent effect of her disclosure. This was a queer, new Morris staring at her. She might have been a phonograph that contained some record important to him, for all the consciousness of her personality in his blank stare. He looked at her a good deal as a man looks at the nearest object when coming to after a severe blow on the head. This stare of his irritated Belinda and rather scared her at the same time. Had she gone too far? What was there in it so shocking for Morry, since he loved her, Belinda? She had thought that he would jump at the easy solution of their problem that it afforded.
She went up to him, and laid her hand on his breast.
"Wake up, Morry...." she said. "Why in the world should you take it like this? You look positively doped...."
Morris caught her hand in a grip that was too painful, even for Belinda's amorous temperament. She gave an angry little miaul of pain.
"Linda ... you little fiend!..." he was saying hoarsely. "You've made this up.... I know you ... all the tricks of the trade.... What d'you mean by it, eh? What do you mean by slandering my wife?..." He shook her to and fro. "Eh?... Tell me that.... What d'you mean?... How d'you dare?... Eh?... Tell me that...."
Belinda gave him back his savage looks full measure.