“All right; only why don’t you want me to call for help?”
“And humiliate me still further?” One small foot, cased in an absurdly light patent-leather slipper with a flashing buckle, tapped the floor angrily. “I have been foolish, and your folly has made me more foolish, but I will not have it known to all the world how foolish I have been. Break the lock at once—now—immediately.”
Cartaret divined that this was eminently a time for silence: she was alive, she was real, and she was human. He opened a drawer in the table, dived under the divan, plunged behind a curtain in one corner, and at last found a shaky hammer and a nicked chisel with which he returned to the locked door.
“I’m not much of a carpenter,” he said, by way of preparatory apology.
The girl said nothing.
He was angry at himself for having appeared to such heavy disadvantage. Consequently, he was unsteady. His first blow missed. His strength turned to mere violence, and he showered futile blows upon the butt of the chisel. Then a misdirected blow hit the thumb of his left hand. He swore softly and, having sworn, heard her laugh.
He looked up: the knife had disappeared. He was pleased at the change to merriment that her face discovered; but, as he looked, he realized that her mirth was launched against his efforts, and he was pleased no longer. His rage directed itself from him to her.
“I’m sorry you don’t approve,” he said sulkily. “For my part, I am quite willing to stop, I assure you.”
If an imperious person may be said to have tossed her head, then it should here be said that this imperious person now tossed hers.
“Now, shall I go to the window and yell into the street?” he savagely inquired.