"But I don't know anything about him!" Wolf reminded her. "I know that he's twice your age——"
"Thirty-eight, then—and I know that he's a loafer—a rich man who has nothing else to do but run around with women——"
"I want to ask you to stop talking about something of which you are entirely ignorant!" Norma interrupted, hotly.
"You're the one that's ignorant, Norma," Wolf said, stubbornly, not looking at her. "You are only a little girl; you think it's great fun to be married to one man, and flirting with another! What makes me sick is that a man like Liggett thinks he can get away with it, and you women——"
"If you say that again, I'll not walk with you!" Norma burst in furiously.
"Does it ever occur to you," Wolf asked, equally roused, "that you are my wife?"
"Yes!" Norma answered, breathlessly. "Yes—it does! And why? Because I was afraid I was beginning to care too much for Chris Liggett—because I knew he loved me, he had told me so!—and I went to you because I wanted to be safe—and I told you so, too, Wolf Sheridan, the very day that we were married! I never lied to you! I told you I loved Chris, that I always had! And if you'd been civil to me," rushed on Norma, beginning to feel tears mastering her, "if you'd been decent to me, I would have gotten over it. I would never have seen him again anyway, after this week, for I told him this morning that I didn't want to go on meeting him—that it wasn't fair to you! But no, you don't trust me and you don't believe me, and consequently—consequently, I don't care what I do, and I'll make you sorry——"
"Don't talk so wildly, Norma," Wolf warned her, in a tone suddenly quiet and sad. "Please don't—people will notice you!"
"I don't care if they do!" Norma said. But she glanced about deserted Eighth Avenue uneasily none the less, and furtively dried her eyes upon a flimsy little transparent handkerchief that somehow tore at her husband's heart. "If you had been a little patient, Wolf——" she pleaded, reproachfully.