"You brute!"
The words left her mouth, sharp, clear-cut, breaking the silence like the lash of a whip. The unexpectedness of it, and the savagery, took Corliss aback. He did not know what to do or say.
"Oh, you coward! You coward!"
"Frona! Listen to me—"
But she cut him off. "No. Do not speak. You can have nothing to say. You have behaved abominably. I am disappointed in you. It is horrible! horrible!"
"Yes, it was horrible,—horrible that she should walk with you, have speech with you, be seen with you."
"'Not until the sun excludes you, do I exclude you,'" she flung back at him.
"But there is a fitness of things—"
"Fitness!" She turned upon him and loosed her wrath. "If she is unfit, are you fit? May you cast the first stone with that smugly sanctimonious air of yours?"
"You shall not talk to me in this fashion. I'll not have it."