When the door closed on Tom, Rita stood for a moment in front of the fireplace, and, covering her face with her hands, began to weep. Williams approached her, overflowing with consolation, and placed his hand caressingly upon her arm. She sprang from him as if she had been stung, and cried out:—
"Don't put your hand on me! Don't touch me!" She stepped backward toward the door leading upstairs to her room.
"Why, Rita," said Williams, "I did not intend anything wrong. I would not offend you for all the world. You are nervous, Rita, and—and—"
"Don't call me Rita," she interrupted, sobbing. "I hate—I hate—" she was going to say "I hate you," but said,—"the name."
He still approached her, though she had been retreating backward step by step. He had no thought of touching her; but as he came toward her, she lost self-control and almost screamed:—
"Don't touch me, I say! Don't touch me!" She had endured his presence till she could bear it no longer, and the thought of Dic sitting with Sukey had so wrought upon her that her self-control was exhausted. Williams walked back to the fireplace, and Rita, opening the stair door, hurriedly went to her room.
"Covering Her Face With Her Hands, She Began To Weep."
She was not one in whom the baser sort of jealousy could exist; but the thought of Dic, her Dic, sitting with Sukey, while she was compelled to endure the presence of the man she had learned almost to hate, burned her. Her jealousy did not take the form of hatred toward Sukey, and the pain it brought her was chiefly because it confirmed her in the belief that she had lost Dic. She did not doubt that Dic had loved her, and her faith in that fact quickened her sense of loss. She blamed no one but herself for the fact that he no longer loved her, and was seeking another. Still, she was jealous, though even that unholy passion could not be base in her.