Page:Caroline Lockhart--The Fighting Shepherdess.djvu/98

 of herself she shrank a little as he, too, got up slowly and faced her. She didn't know him at all — this man who first threw his cigarette away carefully, as though he were in a drawing room and must regard the ashes — he was a personality from an environment with which she was unfamiliar. Then, as though she were his equal in years, experience and intelligence, he spoke to her in a tone that was cool and impersonal, yet which went slash! slash! slash! like the fine, deep, quick cut of a razor.

"I had no notion that you entertained any such feeling towards me. It is something in the nature of a —er— revelation. You are quite right about leaving. Upon second thought, you are quite right about everything—right to keep your promise to Mrs. Toomey, since you gave it, right in your assertion that I am jealous. I am—but not in the sense in which you mean it.

"I have been jealous of your dignity — of the respect that is due you. I have resented keenly any attempt to belittle you. That is why Disston was not welcome when he came to see you. It is the reason why I have not shown a pleasure I did not feel in his writing you!"

"What do you mean?" she demanded.

"I mean that he took you to that dance on a wager—a bet—to prove that he had the courage. To make a spectacle of you—for a story with which to regale his friends and laugh over." She groped for the edge of the table.

"Who told you?"

"Toomey."

"I don't believe it!"

"Teeters verified it." She sat down on the box from which she had risen. Unmoved by the blow he had dealt her, he continued: "You went to that dance against my wishes. What I