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 When that was over they sat down and looked at each other. There was anger and despair in Tom's face, and amusement in Clare's.

"You look as if I'd made it rain."

"You've got me into the hell of a fix, and you know it."

She moved over to him.

"Who's to know?" she said. "You can go out and sleep in the barn if you want, but who'd believe it?"

"That's where I'm sleeping, just the same."

"I'll bet it's wet out there," she said, and laughed again.

Her laughter angered him. He felt absurd enough as it was. But he was grimly determined to let her alone. He did not want her. He knew her psychology, the result of her careless rearing, her narrow life with its emphasis on sex. She had no passions; she and her kind preyed on passion, that was all.

By eleven o'clock the worst of the storm was over, but it was still raining. No car would have moved a hundred feet along the road. Even if it cleared now it would be a day, two days, before Clare could get back. She sat, relaxed and slightly sulky, in Kay's chair by the lamp, while Tom raged about the room. He hated her; the very sight of her in that chair made him murderous. At something after eleven he took his hat and a slicker and went out, and shortly after she heard the splosh of horses' feet in the water outside.

She got up, angry herself now, and confronted him when he came in.

"What are you going to do?"

"Put a slicker on you and take you to Sally Seabright, at Judson."

"If you think I'm going to ride all those miles tonight in this rain you can think again."

"You're going to do just that."

She fought savagely against Kay's slicker when he put it on her, but he was relentless. He even stuck her hat on her, and then opening the door when she refused to go through it, dragged her out forcibly. She tried to bite him in her helpless fury, but he only laughed, and lifting her up