"Let's kiss and make up! Come on now, kiss me, and that'll show we're friends."
"I can't," she said, keeping her face averted.
"Can't—why?"
"For one thing," she retorted angrily, "the odor of stale wine and whiskey isn't pleasant."
"Is there any other reason?" he demanded.
"There is—and a very important one. I don't want to kiss you."
"That means you don't love me. Is that it?"
For a moment she made no answer, but looked him full in the face, her eyes blazing with scorn and anger. Then she spoke and raising her voice until it rang with all the anger and bitterness there was pent up in her heart she cried:
"I love the man I married—love him with all my heart and soul and he loves me! But you are not the man I married; you are another man. You are a stranger, a man inflamed with liquor, a man who comes and talks to me of love when it isn't love at all, a man whose every protestation of love is an insult. That's the man you are and I hate him—I hate him—!"
Staggered by her vehemence, intimidated for a moment by her angry outburst, Stafford let go her hand. Quick to profit by it, Virginia turned, but before she could make a step, he had caught her again by the arm.