Page:Sorrell and Son - Deeping - 1926.djvu/356

 to her, passing almost directly in front of the nose of a big car.

He looked extraordinarily serious, not angry now—but serious.

"What—exactly—is that fellow's business?"

Interference with a vengeance!

"Oscar? Oh, Oscar is an insurance broker."

"You know what I mean. What is his position with regard to—your business?"

Each spoke with nice precision and restrained distinctness, faces turned full south.

"He financed it. He is half 'Salome';—whichever half you please."

"I see. He found the money?"

"Exactly?"

"And—what—precisely—does he?"

He had gone too far, and she answered him with sudden, extraordinary fierceness.

"How dare you? Caddishness. Have I to explain my interior motives—because—you"

"Sorry," he said, with eyes of frank distress. "You are right. That was caddish of me. I'm sorry. But I do hate; I think I'm a little mad"

She seemed relentless.

"Indeed! That a man—you—should ask me such a question! If I choose to have an affair—what business is it?"

"Molly!"

"Well?"

"Don't mock me. Don't pretend. You—you couldn't make such"

"Is it any business of yours?"

"My dear, it is. I can't help it. I love you."

She walked on for some way in a still white silence. "Those old words! And the same old-man-of-the-sea meaning! You Gulliver, you Gulliver!"

There followed an interlude, marked in Kit by an impulse towards humility. He wrote and apologized. "I'm sorry