"Don't be absurd. You know Brent."
"He's not in love with you," assented Palmer. "He doesn't want you that way. There's some woman somewhere, I've heard—and he doesn't care about anybody but her."
He was speaking in a careless, casual way, watching her out of the corner of his eye. And she, taken off guard, betrayed in her features the secret that was a secret even from herself. He sprang up with a bound, sprang at her, caught her up out of her chair, the fingers of one hand clasping her throat.
"I thought so!" he hissed. "You love him—damn you! You love him! You'd better look out, both of you!"
There came a knock at the door between her bedroom and that of Madame Clélie. Palmer released her, stood panting, with furious eyes on the door from which the sound had come. Susan called, "It's all right, Clélie, for the present." Then she said to Palmer, "I told Clélie to knock if she ever heard voices in this room—or any sound she didn't understand." She reseated herself, began to massage her throat where his fingers had clutched it. "It's fortunate my skin doesn't mar easily," she went on. "What were you saying?"
"I know the truth now. You love Brent. That's the milk in the cocoanut."
She reflected on this, apparently with perfect tranquillity, apparently with no memory of his furious threat against her and against Brent. She said:
"Perhaps I was simply piqued because there's another woman."
"You are jealous."
"I guess I was—a little."