"See here: what is all this? What are you driving at?"
"I want to know.... Did you have much of a scene?"
"I'll say it was some stormy young session."
"Is that why you found it necessary to strike her?"
Summerlad started. "What! Strike her! What do you mean?"
But his eyes winced from hers.
"She—Nelly had a bruise on her cheek, that afternoon; and it wasn't an old bruise. Lynn: you struck her!"
"Perhaps. Maybe I did forget myself, I don't remember. What if I did? She asked for it, didn't she? Do you think I've got the patience of Job, to let her get away with insisting on standing between you and me? I'd have half-killed her if she'd stuck to her refusal to go back East!"
Realizing that his tongue was again running away with his discretion, he curbed it sharply, on the verge, perhaps, of admissions yet more damaging, and in panic essayed to win back lost ground.
"But what of that? It's ancient history, Linda."