“You know all about what, Bob?”
She was losing control completely now. The confession, abasement, she had worked up to was not forthcoming.
“Where is she?” she stormed. “Where are you keeping that girl?”
Her face had changed from that of a pretty girl to that of a furious, uncontrolled shrew. Her shrill voice tore through the empty room, struck against the silence.
“Hush,” he said sharply, “don’t yell like that, Bob. Don’t be a fool.”
“I won’t have it. I won’t have you making a laughing stock out of me. Before everybody—everybody’s talking, laughing at you—at me. You’ve got to give that girl up. You’ve got to! Pay her off and let her go away and hide till it’s over.”
The vein of caddishness was rich in Ted. He looked at her coolly—calculated her hysteria, made her maddeningly conscious of his imperturbability. Turning away, he lit a cigarette.
“So you won’t answer me!”
“I really don’t know what you mean, Bob. You hurl a lot of accusations at me and in the same breath you want a lot of promises. I don’t know what you’re driving at, my dear.”
“Then I’m through with you,” she said, viciously.