Page:Man's Country (1923).pdf/289

 commodation—that's live and let live, that's—"

George was embarrassed and interrupted by perceiving that his wife was containing herself with difficulty, a prey to surprising, unreasonable anger, while he was innocently and stupidly unaware of having given her cause for anger. He had merely—merely tried to make himself plain—was all. Patient, long-suffering man that he was, he decided to try again. "You don't want to be a vampire, do you, Fay?" he inquired tenderly reproachful. "Just sucking all the business blood out of me—and trying to make me into a sort of—a sort of social lapdog?"

"Lapdog? . . ." and her tones quivered with scorn and wrath as she rose silently and ominously to a very climax of rage in which she exploded upon him with "You—you hedgehog!"

She accomplished a terrific sound of smashing something by a sudden crumpling of the evening paper which had lain in her lap, and flounced out of the room.

"Hedgehog! Whew!" chuckled George. "That was a hot one."

But the very next day Fay had lapsed into her most bewitching mood, that of languorous, challenging love.

"Oh, do come away to Daphnean groves, George, and play with me," she pleaded, with her most captivating smile, glancing up so coquettishly from under the long lashes, so ravish-