"Mmm.... Yes, she is a friend of Lane's. He introduced me, I believe."
Her eyes fired. "You said you were at strike headquarters."
"So I was, until I took a little run out Hazelton way. Then I came back and finished up my work," he lied recklessly.
"He saw you at Catawba. That's ten miles beyond Hazelton.... You didn't get back until midnight last night, Pelham."
"Why, I was here for supper! Then I had to go down town...."
"You were with Miss Richard again." She ventured a chance shot.
His jaw stiffened, the occasional look of childish petulance smoldering around his eyes. "What if I was? Do you expect me to be locked in by a keeper every night?"
"You never mentioned her ... except meeting her."
His mind squirmed. "We have so much else to talk about."
She pushed the disorder of letters backward with a gesture of irritation. "It was a risk marrying you. Every one said so; you had been splendid with me, but before that—you told me yourself—you'd switched from this girl to that.... You had something up with 'Thea Meade, I never asked what.... And the girls while you were in college, Nellie Tolliver and the rest. I never minded them; that was before I knew you. But this.... Do you think I have no shame, even if you haven't?"