Striding up and down the room, he struck his leather breeches smartly with his riding-crop—which he had brought from the hall because the baby liked to play with it—so that they resounded. He halted before his wife and exclaimed hoarsely:
"What are we to do, then?"
She had been warned by feminine innuendoes before marriage of the Maxwell vehemence below the surface, and she perceived that their affairs had reached a crisis.
"Sit down, Herbert, please. I cannot bear noise. If we are to arrange matters, we must talk quietly in order to decide what is really best under all the circumstances."
He gave an impatient twist to his head. "I wish you to know that I am master here after this," he announced. Nevertheless, he walked to the chair near the fireplace, which he had first occupied, and sitting down, folded his arms.
"Well, what have you to say?"
"To begin with, Herbert, there is no escape for either of us from this calamity. And you must not suppose that I do not realize how dreadful it is for us both. So far as there is fault, it is mine. I ought never to have married you. But the past is the past; I do not love you now; I can never love you again."
"One way out of it," he said between his teeth, "would be to kill the man you do love."
"How would that avail?"
"I have thought more than once of shooting him down like a dog," he blurted.