“That may be enough for you, my dear Brunow, but it isn't enough for me. You don't leave this room with my good-will until you have given me some justification for your conduct.”
“I'll give you none!” he cried. “You're a liar and a hypocrite, and I've done with you forever! That ought to be enough for you! Stand by and let me go, or—” he raised his stick with a threatening gesture, but at that I could afford to smile. I knew Brunow a great deal too well to think him likely to assault me after having put me on my guard by a threat.
“I wonder,” he said, with his lips quivering and his teeth tight clinched behind them—“I wonder that I don't thrash you within an inch of your life.”
“I wouldn't waste much wonder on that question if I were you, Brunow,” I answered. “You will be able to find an easy explanation. Tell me on what grounds you come to me with these angry accusations.”
“You pretend you don't know?” he sneered. “You can't guess, you soul of honor!”
“I pretend nothing,” I told him; “but no man uses such language to me without justifying it. A gentleman having under any fancied sense of wrong used such language will hasten to find reasons for it.”
“You may keep me here,” said Brunow, throwing himself savagely into an arm-chair. “I won't bluster with you, but I decline to explain or justify a word I've said, and you can take what course you please.”
“Very well,” I answered, turning the key in the lock and then putting it in my pocket, “we shall both have an opportunity of exercising the great gift of patience.”
“Look here,” he cried, suddenly leaping from his chair and shaking his forefinger in ray face, “do you pretend to deny that months and months ago I told you what my feelings were with respect to Miss Rossano?”
“You told me,” I answered, “that you admired her, and that she had a very pretty little income of her own. You coupled those two facts together in such a way as to make me think you were ready to contract a mercenary marriage.”