Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/278

 Startled and outraged, Fay Judson screamed the name hoarsely, as in protest at some terrible profanation, while her husband stared dumbly, for before his eyes a lightning transformation took place.

That soft Persian kitten of a woman, with her little, kittenish rages and quick remorses, whom he had known, went away, and there appeared a vision utterly different—a something out of the jungles of biology—not his darling Fay, but a race-woman, primal, elemental, aboriginal—a very tiger-cat of a woman who appeared to feel herself attacked on ground she would fight tooth and nail to hold, as the primordial women fought.

A transformation indeed, this, for gentle Fay—that same sensitive and refined Fay who had been so painfully shocked, not very long ago, by her husband's vehement outburst against social interruptions. ("Perfectly common," she had called his angry tirade then;—his "practical" nature, under the friction of displeasure, had shown itself through the surface veneer and disappointed sweet Fay so terribly!). A transformation indeed, when a kitten bares its claws!

"George Judson," she warned, with that low, hitherto inconceivable, fierce note in her tones, "George Judson, if you ever dare to make an insinuation like that again I'll tear your eyes out."