"Why should I explain? You have evidently found an explanation that satisfies you." He drew himself up in a quiet gesture of haughtiness. "Besides, it has never been my habit to allow myself to be questioned or to explain myself."
Her eyes widened with terror. "Fred!" she gasped. "What do you mean?"
"Precisely what I say," said he, in the same cool, inevitable way. "A man came to you with a story about me. You listened. A sufficient answer to the story was that I am marrying you. That answer apparently does not content you. Very well. I shall make no other."
She gazed at him uncertainly. She felt him going—and going finally. She seized him with desperate fingers, cried: "I am content. Oh, Fred—don't frighten me this way!"
He smiled satirically. "Are you afraid of the scandal—because everything for the wedding has gone so far?"
"How can you think that!" cried she—perhaps too vigorously, a woman would have thought.
"What else is there for me to think? You certainly haven't shown any consideration for me."
"But you told me yourself that you were false to me."
"Really? When?"
She forgot her fear in a gush of rage rising from sudden realization of what she was doing—of how leniently and weakly and without pride she was dealing with this man. "Didn't you admit——"