“Hello, honey!” she cried. “What's wrong? You've got a fever, I'm sure. I'm going to take your temperature.”
From her hospital experience she carried a little thermometer in her hand-bag. She had it by her and rose to put it under his tongue. He struck it from her, and she stared at him. He stood quivering like an overdriven horse. He called her a name highly proper in a kennel club, but inappropriate to the boudoir.
“You thought you'd get away with it, didn't you? You thought you'd get away with it, didn't you?” he panted.
“Get away with what, honey?” she said, thinking him delirious. She had seen a hundred men shrieking in wild frenzies from brains too hot.
“You and Dyckman! humph!” he raged. “So you and Jim Dyckman sneaked off to the mountains together, did you? And came back on the same train, eh? And thought I'd never find it out. Why, you—”
What he would have said she did not wait to hear. She was human, after all, and had thousands of plebeian and primitive ancestors and ancestresses. They jumped into her muscles with instant instinct. She slapped his face so hard that it rocked out of her view.
She stood and fumbled at her tingling palm, aghast at herself and at the lightning-stroke from unknown distances that shattered her whole being. Then she began to sob.
Peter Cheever's aching jaw dropped, and he gazed at her befuddled. His illogical belief in her guilt was illogically converted to a profound conviction of her innocence. The wanton whom he had accused was metamorphosed into a slandered angel who would not, could not sin. In his eyes she was hopelessly pure.
“Thank God!” he moaned. “Oh, thank God for one clean woman in this dirty world!”
He caught her bruised hand and began to kiss it and pour tears on it. And she looked down at his beautiful bent head and laid her other hand on it in benison.