"Is that why you have avoided me?" she demanded in a tone of such concentrated passion that the unexpected flare-up startled him. It surprised her, too: for, all at once, in her heart something contracted agonizingly, and a surge of furious resentment flooded her, almost strangling speech.
"Why are you indifferent? Why are—are you unkind?" she stammered. "I've just found you again after all these years, haven't I? What do other people matter to us? Why should Oswald interfere between you and me? You and I haven't had each other for years! I—I can't stand it—to have you unkind—indifferent—to have you leave me this way when I want you—so desperately——"
"I didn't leave you," he retorted sullenly. "You went away with—the man you married——"
"Don't speak of him that way!" she interrupted hotly. "Nobody speaks of that affair at all!"
"Why not? You did marry him, didn't you?"
"What of it!" she flamed back. "What has that to do with you and me! Why do you refer to it? It's my personal affair, anyway!"
He turned toward her, exasperated:
"If you think," he said, "that your behaviour with Grismer means nothing to me, you'd better undeceive yourself! ... Or I'll do it for you in a way you can't mistake!"
"Undeceive me?" she repeated uneasily. "How do you mean?"
"By making a fight for you myself," he said, "by doing my best to get you back!"