"Go on with it? Do you—you mean our comedy of marriage? Why not? 'Rather bear those ills we have than fly to others that we know not of.' You see I have contracted Tommy's pernicious habit of borrowing from the classics when I wish to express myself with force and distinction. Let me go!"
Courtlandt's grip on her shoulders tightened. His face was white. There was a rigidity about his jaws which should have warned her.
"Flippancy won't save you. You are to listen to me now, girl."
"While you boast to me again as you did last night that you had not made love to another woman? Not a chance!" she twisted away from him and gained the threshold of her own room. "Don't—don't let me keep you from your alluring—friend," she flung back at him before she closed and locked her door on the inside with grating emphasis.
Then she listened with hands clasped tight over her heart. The anger which was so foreign to her character had been a mere flash in the pan. Already she was sorry and humiliated and ashamed. She had maintained always that a girl who could not keep her temper, who wrangled, belonged in the quarter where shrewish women, with shawls over their heads and forlorn little babies forever under their feet, fought and brawled. Hadn't she seen them in her childhood? And she—she who thought herself superior hadn't been much better under the skin. She could have scratched Felice's eyes out and as for Steve——
Where was he now? The living-room was portentously still. Had he gone? Why couldn't she have listened to his explanation, have assumed a friendliness which this new, disturbing riot in her veins made impossible as a reality? Her eyes which still smarted with unshed tears traveled round the dainty, chintz-hung boudoir. In a detached way she noted that the one picture on the wall, which served as the key-note to the color scheme of the room, needed straightening. She must speak to Ming Soy——Her heart hopped to her throat, then did a tail-spin to her toes as a low, stern voice outside her room commanded:
"Open the door, Jerry."
She stood rigid, motionless.
"Open the door!" there was an undercurrent in Courtlandt's words which seemed to paralyze her muscles. In a voice the more compelling because of its repression he threatened, "If you don't open it at once—I'll break it in!" The shake he gave the barrier between them broke the spell which held the girl. She turned the key and flung open the door.
With a sudden fierce movement he caught her hands. She had a confused sense of flinging herself against an inflexible, determined will as she struggled to free them. She met his steady, dominant eyes.