"I can't for the life of me see why you should be so damned jealous, Laura," he burst out presently, thrust back from the surface conventions into a brute impulse of rage.
"I told you I didn't know," she answered irritably, "I told you that—"
"Of course, I'm willing to let it go this time," he went on, with what she felt to be a complacent return to his lordly attitude, "there's no use making a fuss, so we may as well forget it—but, for heaven's sake, don't give me a jealous wife. There's nothing under heaven more likely to drive a man insane."
Some elusive grace in her attitude—a suggestion of a wild thing poised for flight—arrested him suddenly as he looked at her; and she saw his face change instantly while the fire of passion leaped to his eyes.
"Be a darling and we'll forget it all!" he exclaimed.
He made a step forward, but shrinking back until she appeared almost to crouch against the wall, she put out her hands as if warding off his approach.
"Don't touch me!" she said; and though she spoke in a whisper, her words seemed to shriek back at her from the air. The thought that she was fighting for the freedom of her soul rushed through her brain, and at the instant, had he laid his hand upon her, she knew that she would have thrown herself from the window.
"I don't want to touch you," he returned, cooling immediately, "but can't you come to your senses and be reasonable?"
"If you don't mind I wish you'd go," she said, looking at him with a smile which was like the smile of a statue.
"If I go now will you promise to get sensible again?" he asked, with annoyance, for it occurred to him that since he had made up his mind to be magnanimous, she had repulsed his generosity in a most ungrateful fashion.