"I'm not jealous of that damned, scented foreigner, with his rings and his jeweled canes and his hand-kissing. I know it must make your honest American flesh creep to have him touch his lips to the back of your hand."
Neva blazed at him. "How dare you!" she cried, rising in her wrath. "How dare you stand in my house, in my presence, and insult thus the best friend I ever had—the only friend!"
"Friend!" sneered Armstrong. "I know all about the sort of friendship that rake is capable of."
Neva was facing him with a look that blanched his face. "You will withdraw those insults to Boris," she said, in that low, even voice which is wrath's deadliest form of expression, "and you will apologize to me, or you will leave here, never to return."
"I beg your pardon," he responded instantly. "I am ashamed of having said those things. I—I ... It was jealousy. I love you, and I can't bear to think of the possibility of rivalry."
"You are swift with apologies. In the future, be less swift with impertinence and insult," she answered, showing in manner, as well, that she was far from mollified. "As between Boris's friendship and professions of love from a man who only a little while ago neglected and abandoned and forgot me——"
"For God's sake, Neva," he pleaded. "I've been paying for that. And now that you have shown me how little hope there is for me, I shall continue to suffer. Be a little merciful!"
His agitation, where usually there was absolute self-control, convinced and silenced her. Presently he said, "Will you be friends again—if I'll behave myself?"
She nodded with her humorous smile and flash of the eyes. "If you behave yourself," replied she. "We were talking of—of Fosdick, was it not?"
"Fosdick!" He made a gesture of disgust. "That name! I never hear it or think of it except in connection with something repulsive. It's always like a whiff from a sewer."