His intense irritability had communicated itself to her. She felt an almost reckless desire to get rid of him. His look of embittered wretchedness tormented her nerves. She wondered how it had ever been able to interest her, even to lure her. She was amazed at her own perversity.
“I cannot allow you to come here if you are going to try to interfere with my arrangements,” she added, with a sort of fierce coldness.
“I have a right to come here.”
“You have not. You have no rights over me, none at all. I have made a great many sacrifices for you, far too many, but I shall never sacrifice my complete independence for you or for any one.”
“Sacrifices for me!” he exclaimed.
He snatched up the photograph, held it with both his hands, exerted his strength, smashed the glass, broke the frame, tore the photograph in half, and threw it, the fragments of red wood and the bits of glass on the table.
“You’ve made your boy hate me, and you shan’t have him there,” he said savagely.
“How dare you!” she exclaimed, in a low, hoarse voice.
She flung out her hands. In snatching at the ruined photograph she picked up with it a fragment of glass. It cut her hand slightly, and a thin thread of blood ran down over her white skin.
“Oh, your hand!” exclaimed Dion, in a changed voice. “It’s bleeding!”