“Agh!”
In her meekness she needed some insult to revive her, and this sufficed. She flared instantly:
“I’m sorry I told you. I hope that Nicky blows up your whole damned shipyard and you with it; and I’d like to help him!”
Nothing less insane could have served the brilliant effect of that outburst. It cleared the sultry air like a crackling thunderbolt. A gentle rain followed down her cheeks, while the overcharged heart of Davidge roared with Jovian laughter.
There is no cure for these desperate situations like such an explosion. It burns up at once the litter of circumstance and leaves hardly an ash. It fuses elements that otherwise resist welding, and it annihilates all minor fears in one great terror that ends in a joyous relief.
Mamise was having a noble cry now, and Davidge was sobbing with laughter––the two forms of recreation most congenial to their respective sexes.
Davidge caught her hands and cooed with such noise that the driver outside must have heard the reverberations through the glass:
“You blessed child! I’m a low-lived brute, and you’re an angel.”
A man loves to call himself a brute, and a woman loves to be called an angel, especially when it is untrue in both cases.
The sky of their being thus cleansed with rain and thunder, and all blue peace again, they were calm enough by and by to consider the main business of the session––what was to be done to save the shipyard from destruction?