"Sir!"
He regarded her from head to foot and back again. Her cheeks flamed—not altogether with anger. It was not unpleasant to be looked at hard by him.
"Althea," he said at last, "suppose I told you I had come to-night to quarrel with you?"
She turned with a strange, scared appeal in her eyes.
"Oh! I should beg you not to. Don't ever quarrel with me, Paul—please."
The artless speech was so unlike anything he had ever heard from her—her voice, as she uttered it, so uncomfortably reminiscent of another, whose vain pleading had only just ceased to vibrate in his heart, that Paul had what may be best described as a moment of sentimental vertigo.
He laid his hand lightly upon hers. "Dear Mrs. Hepworth, do you dream I could be harsh with you?"
She did not move her hand from under his, nor appear conscious that one chapter of their intimacy was irretrievably ended by the impulsive moment.
"I only know I dread your anger. I suspect it can be awful."
"You shall never be sure, then. But reproof at least you must bear. Althea, you have put me under an obligation that no man finds tolerable."