"Oh Luce! I don't believe they're as bad as all that——"
"Then don't believe it," he retorted, with the utmost rudeness. "But understand one thing, I'll have no she-devils round this house."
"Very well, let them be he-devils," she flung back at him. "I am accustomed to those."
At that he stamped away from her towards the other door, gesturing with rage, and throwing broken words in her direction.
"Isn't my life bad enough already?... Oh Hades!... I wouldn't stand it for a minute ... curse all women ... don't ever talk to me about this again ... I tell you.... It's monstrous ... a lot of thieves and blackguards.... You're driving me out of my own house ... I shall go to the Rand to-morrow ... why, by God, I!..."
The door closed with a crash behind him.
CHAPTER III
AT two o'clock one afternoon Sophie Cornell walked into her sitting-room and flung upon the table by the side of her typewriter a great roll of MSS. She was gorgeously attired in a hat massed with roses of a shade that "never was on land or sea," and a furiously befrilled gown of sky-blue silk-muslin. But her face was flushed and heated, and her eyebrows met in a scowl of decided ill-temper. Opening a door that led through a long passage to the kitchen, she shouted:
"Zambani! Zambani! Checcha now with my lunch. Send Piccanin to lay table. Checcha wena!"