“I'm back on dry land. Oh! it is safer for me. There I am protected by my little bodyguard of three—the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. I can't get on without them.”
Jimmie leaped from his chair and brought his clenched hands down to his sides in a passionate gesture.
“Stop talking like that, I say!” he cried imperiously.
Then meeting her scared and indignant glance, he bowed somewhat wide of her.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, in a tone of no great apology, and marched out of the little temple and along the gravelled walk of the terrace. Flight, or the loss of self-control, was his only alternative. What she thought of him he did not care. The sense of increasing distance from her alone brought security to his soul.
At the further end he met Mrs. Deering just back from her drive.
“Why, what is the matter, Jimmie?” she asked, twirling an idle sunshade over her pretty head, for the terrace was in deep afternoon shadow.
“Nothing,” he replied, with a ghastly attempt at a smile. “I am going for a walk before dinner.”
He left her standing, reached the highroad and pounded along it. What a fool he had been! What a mad fool he had been!
Mrs. Deering, with a puzzled expression on her face, watched him disappear. She turned and strolled down to Norma, who greeted her with a satiric smile.