Tom flushed. He knew he had never been afraid of anything in his life, except her; but nevertheless the accusation stung. And as he was still afraid of her he stammered as he began to deny the charge.
'Oh, leave off!' said Sally, irritably. 'Suck a lozenge.'
'I'm not afraid,' said Tom, condensing his remarks to their minimum as his only chance of being intelligible.
'You are.'
'I'm not. It's just that I—'
A nasty gleam came into Sally's eyes. Her manner was haughty.
'It doesn't matter.' She paused. 'I've no doubt Ted Pringle will do what I want.'
For all her contempt, she could not keep a touch of uneasiness from her eyes as she prepared to make her next remark. There was a look about Tom's set jaw which made her hesitate. But her temper had run away with her, and she went on.
'I am sure he will,' she said. 'When we became engaged he said that he would do anything for me.'
There are some speeches that are such conversational knockout blows that one can hardly believe that life will ever pick itself up and go on again after them. Yet it does. The dramatist brings down the curtain on such speeches. The novelist blocks his reader's path with a zareba of stars. But in life there are no curtains, no stars, nothing final and definite—only ragged pauses and discomfort. There was such a pause now.