In a moment he let her go, and she sank upon her couch, hiding her quivering face with convulsive weeping.
"You are cruel! You are cruel!" she sobbed.
He remained beside her, looking down at her till some of the sternness passed from his face.
He bent at last and touched her. "I'm not cruel," he said. "I'm just in earnest, that's all. You be careful for the future! There's a bit of the devil in me too when I'm goaded."
She drew herself away from him, half-frightened still and half petulant. "You used to be—ever so much nicer than you are now," she said, keeping her face averted.
He answered her sombrely as he turned away, "I used to have a wife that I honoured before all creation."
She sprang to her feet. "Dick! How can you be so horrid?"
He shrugged his shoulders as he walked to the door. "I was—a big fool," he said very bitterly.
The door closed upon him. Netta stood staring at it, tragic and tear-stained.
Suddenly she stamped her foot and whirled round in a rage. "I won't be treated like a naughty child! I won't—I won't! I'll write to my Arabian Knight—I'll write now—and tell him how wretched I am! If Dick objects to our friendship I'll just leave him, that's all. I was a donkey ever to marry him. I always knew we shouldn't get on."