More anger melted away.
"I haven't even had my dinner yet."
Gay sprang up like a whirlwind.
"Oh, how detestable you are," she said, in a low, furious voice, "with your dinner and your wretched excuses! Do you think I don't know what you were doing that you forgot? Everyone knows what you are doing when you forget your engagements—playing poker and drinking with a lot of low gambling men, wasting your money and your time and all that is fine in you!"
Druro had stood up, too, and faced her with the first bolt she flung. They were quite alone, for the trilling notes of a two-step had swiftly emptied the veranda. He still wore a smile on his lips, but its singularly heart-warming quality had gone from it. His red-brown face had grown a shade less red-brown, and his grey, whimsical, good-natured eyes looked suddenly hard as rock. He addressed her as if she were someone he had never met before.
"You are very plain-spoken!"
"You need a little plain-speaking," she said passionately.
"It is a pity to waste wit and wisdom on an object so unworthy. Obviously, I am past reforming"—his smile had a mocking turn to it now—"even if I wanted to be reformed."
"Of course you don't want to be reformed," said Gay. "No drunkard and gambler ever does."
Her voice was hard, but there was a pain in her heart like the twist of a knife there. She pressed her hand among the laces of her dress, and all the little paste jewels twinkled. Druro noticed them. They engaged his attention, even while he was swallowing down her words like a bitter dose of poison. He was deeply offended. She spoke to him as if he were some kind of a pariah, and it was unpardonable. If she had been a man, he would have known what to do, and have done it quick. But what could be done with a slip of a girl who stood there with a folded lace butterfly around her and looked like a passionate tea-rose twinkling with dewdrops? Nothing, except just smile. But only the self-control gained in many a hard-won and ably bluffed game of life (and poker) enabled him to do it, and to say, with great gentleness: