"I know," she assented. "More Lillas, ad infinitum. Isn't it tiresome?"
He jumped up, with a groan:
"I could kill you!"
"Too late. You ought to have done it when we were children together."
"Yes, too late, too late."
He wandered round the room, slapping one fist into the other, glaring at the walls, from which old-time ladies simpered vapidly at him. His brain seemed to be whirling round in his skull; his vision became blurred; and he had a dreadful apprehension of losing contact with normality. But normality, too—what was it? Normality was being natural! He came toward her; she rose and recoiled; but he caught hold of her arms above the elbows, and held her fast when she swayed back from him with a long shimmer of her copper-colored gown.
"You're hurting me, Cornie. And there's the bell," she muttered, her heart going dead.
He released her with the gesture of a man who hurls an enemy over a precipice. He gasped:
"One of these days!"
And with a livid smile he left the room as David Verne appeared in the doorway, in his wheel chair, propelled by Hamoud.