Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/279

 But her husband met the crisis unyieldingly. "It wasn't an insinuation, Fay," he answered steadily; "it was only a hazard, but before God, I believe there's something in it!"

The violet eyes blazed. From soft Fay Judson's throat came that inarticulate snarl of the tigress that is in every woman, and her fingers like curving talons tore toward her husband's face.

But his hands were quicker. Before the fingers could touch him he had seized her wrists. Strong wrists they were, with all their wielding of tennis rackets and swinging of golf sticks and pulling of oars, but George held the hands as if they had been Junior's. He was so much stronger that he could be absolutely gentle as he lowered them to his breast and held them there as in a velvet vise, very close to him, very helpless, while he looked steadily into her eyes.

"Let me go!" she panted desperately. "Let me go!"

He still held her. If he had smiled at the ease with which he did it, if his lip had curled with the slightest scorn at the futility of her struggles, if he had gloated over the magnificence of his physical superiority, or if his eye had flashed one hint of anger, he would have lost her there and then. But he did none of these things. His expression was of shame and unspeakable regret. His air was that of one who