“Well?” demanded Bob Cullen.
Still the Irishman preserved a silence of stone.
“Oh, Bob, you sorehead,” cried Lib Dale, grinding her heel into the carpet. “Of all the id—”
“But Bob, dear,” pleaded Miss Lebetwood, “what Sean said to Lib was long, long ago in the spring, and she’s forgotten all about it, and so should you, you silly kid.”
The voice of Cosgrove came thundering, overwhelming. “Woman,” he said, and a quite perceptible thrill passed over us, for he spoke to his intended wife, and “woman” as he said it then sounded the most brutal word he could use—“woman, no need for you to defend me. The code of this young upstart is not my code, by the heavens—nor is yours my code. Stand aside.”
“Sean!”
“Stand aside—did you hear?”
“But Sean—”
“While the light is in me, I shall offer it to you, woman, and to all others I find in need of grace—even if it gall your young upstart there.”
Paula Lebetwood had tottered a step backward, with an expression of the utmost pain and loss upon her face. Suddenly her face was hidden in her hands, and her shoulders heaved with swift gusts of feeling. Then she lifted her face tearless and hot-eyed and defiant beneath golden hair turning to riot.