Rooke regarded him apparently unmoved.
"I've yet to learn the law which compels a man to part with his work," he remarked indifferently.
Roger took an impetuous step towards him, his clenched hand raised as though to strike.
"You hound—" he began hoarsely.
Nan rushed between them, catching the upraised hand.
"Roger! . . . Roger!" she cried, her voice shrill with the fear that in another moment the two men would be at grips.
But he shook off her hand, flinging her aside with such force that she staggered helplessly backwards.
"As for you," he thundered, his eyes blazing with concentrated anger, "it's you I've to thank that any man should hold my future wife so cheap as to imagine he may paint her portrait and then keep it in his house as though it were his own! . . . But I'm damned if he shall!"
White and shaken, she leaned against the window frame, clutching at the wood-work for support and staring at him with affrighted eyes as he turned once more to Rooke.
In his big, brawny strength, doubled by the driving force of anger, he seemed to tower above the slim, supple figure of the artist, who stood leaning negligently against the side of the piano, watching him with narrowed eyes and a faintly supercilious smile on his lips.