He sat up, drawing the bath-robe tightly about him, and tried to frown at her; but he felt, and he appeared, at a horrible disadvantage.
"What do you want?" he demanded.
She couldn’t speak for a moment. She only looked at him with her fierce black eyes, pressing a hand against her breast, as if to stifle by force the tumult there. He was alarmed, really, although he tried so desperately to look scornful.
"Well?" he asked again. "What did you come here for?"
"That letter!" she said. "That letter to Eddie! You shan’t send it!"
"I have," he answered.
"No!" she cried. "No! You haven’t."
"I tell you I have!" he answered definitely. "I told you so over the telephone."
She stood motionless, staring past him, oblivious of his uneasy bewilderment. Thoughts were running through her brain like fire through parched grass. She remembered things she had heard—of the English suffragettes pouring acid into mail-boxes to destroy their contents. But what did they use, and where to get it?
Her vigorous and subtle brain was never quite without resource. She thought and thought, with passionate intensity, and at last, suddenly, an idea came to her. She went out of the room abruptly, so swiftly and silently that Vincent was astonished and more than ever alarmed. What in Heaven’s name was that damnable girl up to now? He knew she wouldn’t stop at anything.