"How very forbearing of him! You let that pass, too?"
"Yes."
She reflected.
"You did right," she said at length. "I was at first so much surprised at your having behaved like that, that I could hardly believe it. But you did right. It was, however, quite unnecessary to smash Marie's photograph—or is that a dramatic climax to show your inalienable fidelity to me?"
She laughed.
"There, drink your whisky," she said. "How extraordinary men are! Whenever they have had some powerful and exhausting emotion, a little alcohol always puts them square again. One ought to measure everything by that. A wife talked about—large whisky-and-soda; a friend talked about—small whisky-and-soda; one's self talked about—well, that is a stimulus in itself: say a Lithia Varalette, something lowering, by way of adjustment."
Jack, angry as he was, answered to her voice, as a fretful horse answers to a hand it knows, perhaps from habit, perhaps from the sense of a master astride it.
"You take it like this?" he said. "You can have no idea what it means to me."
Mildred stood silent a moment, then laughed.