"He wouldn't come down a cent. And I don't blame him."
Morris glowered at the butler and the footman. They went about their business as if quite unconscious of the work of peace they were doing—and were expected by their mistress to do. Mrs. Morris talked on and on, pretending to assume that he was as delighted with her purchase as was she. She discoursed of these particular tapestries, of tapestries in general, of the atmosphere they brought into a house—"the suggestion, the very spirit of the old, beautiful life of the upper classes in the Middle Ages." By the time dinner was over she had talked herself so far away from the sordid things of life that the coarsest nature would have shrunk from intruding them. But on that evening Morris was angry through and through. When they left the dining room, she said, "Now, come and look at them, dear."
"No," he said savagely. He threw open the door of his study. "Come in here. I want to talk to you."
She hesitated. A glance at his fury-blanched face convinced her that, if she made it necessary, he would seize her and thrust her in. As the door closed on them with a bang, the butler said to the footman, "Letty's done it once too often."
The footman tiptoed toward the door. The butler stopped him with, "You couldn't hear bloody murder through that study door, and the keyhole's no good."
"Why didn't he take her to her boudoir?" grumbled the footman.
She had indeed "done it once too often." As soon as Morris had the door locked he blazed down at her—she fresh and innocent, with her fluffy golden hair and sweet blue eyes and dimples on either side of her pretty mouth. "Damn you!" he exclaimed through his set teeth. "You want to ruin me, body and soul—you vampire!"
Two big slow tears drenched her eyes. "Oh, Joe!" she implored. "What have I done! Don't be angry with me. It kills me!" And she caught her breath like a child trying bravely not to cry and put out her rosy arms toward him, her round, rosy shoulders and bosom rising and falling in a rhythmic swell.
"Don't touch me!" he all but shouted. "That's part of your infernal game. Oh, you think I'm a fool—and so I am—so I am! But not the kind you imagine. It hasn't been your cleverness that has made me play the idiot, but my own weakness." He caught her by the shoulders. "What is it?" he cried furiously, shaking her. "What's the infernal spell I get under whenever you touch me?"
"You love me," she pleaded, "as I love you."