“I know,” he said, glancing at the clock over the door. “Where have you been?—where were you this morning? I was worried about you, I—I was afraid you might be sick.”
“Were you?” she said. “I'm all right. I had business in Boston.”
“Why didn't you telephone me? In Boston?” he repeated.
She nodded. He started forward again, but she avoided him.
“What's the matter?” he cried. “I've been worried about you all day—until this damned strike broke loose. I was afraid something had happened.”
“You might have asked my father,” she said.
“For God's sake, tell me what's the matter!”
His desire for her mounted as his conviction grew more acute that something had happened to disturb a relationship which, he had congratulated himself, after many vicissitudes and anxieties had at last been established. He was conscious, however, of irritation because this whimsical and unanticipated grievance of hers should have developed at the moment when the caprice of his operatives threatened to interfere with his cherished plans—for Ditmar measured the inconsistencies of humanity by the yardstick of his desires. Her question as to why he had not made inquiries of her father added a new element to his disquietude. As he stood thus, worried, exasperated, and perplexed, the fact that there was in her attitude something ominous, dangerous, was slow to dawn on him. His faculties were wholly unprepared for the blow she struck him.
“I hate you!” she said. She did not raise her voice, but the deliberate, concentrated conviction she put into the sentence gave it the dynamic quality of a bullet. And save for the impact of it—before which he physically recoiled—its import was momentarily without meaning.
“What?” he exclaimed, stupidly.