His voice ran warily and detached. Her anger stirred again in her violently. But she subdued it, because of the danger there was in him, and more, perhaps, because of the beauty of his head and his level drawn brows, which she could not bear to forfeit.
“That’s more than I can say of you,” she said. “I’ve heard more harm than good about you.”
“Ay, I dessay,” he said, looking in the fire. It was a long time since he had seen the furze burning, he said to himself. There was a silence, during which she watched his face.
“Do you call yourself a man?” she said, more in contemptuous reproach than in anger. “Leave a woman as you’ve left me, you don’t care to what!—and then to turn up in this fashion, without a word to say for yourself.”
He stirred in his chair, planted his feet apart, and resting his arms on his knees, looked steadily into the fire, without answering. So near to her was his head, and the close black hair, she could scarcely refrain from starting away, as if it would bite her.
“Do you call that the action of a man?” she repeated.
“No,” he said, reaching and poking the bits of wood into the fire with his fingers. “I didn’t call it anything, as I know of. It’s no good calling things by any names whatsoever, as I know of.”
She watched him in his actions. There was a longer and longer pause between each speech, though neither knew it.
“I wonder what you think of yourself!” she exclaimed, with vexed emphasis. “I wonder what sort of a fellow you take yourself to be!” She was really perplexed as well as angry.
“Well,” he said, lifting his head to look at her, “I guess I’ll answer for my own faults, if everybody else’ll answer for theirs.”