"Hold your tongue, you imbecile!" called out his wife, turning on him fiercely. "When I want to play the fool. I'll ask for your advice."
Her exit, a tempestuous one, left Mazie and Kelly alone and forlorn. Poor Harry Kelly collapsed in his swivel chair, while Mazie hovered around the desk like a gadfly.
"Unless you give her what for," she warned him, "you'll never travel on asphalt."
He looked up and feebly waved her away.
"What can I do?" he said plaintively. "Just jawing back won't help matters."
"No," said Mazie scornfully. "Jawing back won't. But how about knocking her down and jumping on her with both feet? Gee, if I had your strength for five minutes! I tell you what, my frazzled Gorilla, if you don't mop up the floor with her this very minute, she'll make a doormat of you for the rest of your life."
Her tone was slighting, and there was bark in the dose she administered. For a second, he straightened up. Then he shook his head at her, slumped again, and buckled down to the papers on the desk. Poor Harry! His muscle was willing, but his nerve was weak.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
I
The blow which Robert got between the eyes when he saw Janet and St. Hilaire together had left him shunned. And he was on the train speeding to Fontainebleau before he began coming to, a painful process of returning sensibility, beside which the pins and needles of a limb that had been asleep would have seemed the merest child's play.