Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/162

148 Dennis hesitated. "And what does it make my own?"

"Exactly the one you came to take. You have taken it by your startling presence; you're up to your eyes in it, and there's nothing that will become you so as to wear it bravely and gallantly. If you don't like it," Rose added, "you should have thought of that before!"

"You like it so much on your side," Dennis retorted, "that you appear to have engaged in measures to create it even before the argument for it had acquired the force that you give such a fine account of."

"Do you mean by giving it out as an accomplished fact? It was never too soon to give it out; the right moment was the moment you were there. Your arrival changed everything; it gave me on the spot my advantage; it precipitated my grasp of it."

Vidal's expression was like a thing battered dead, and his voice was a sound that matched it. "You call your grasp your announcement?"

She threw back her head. "My announcement has reached you? Then you know I've cut off your retreat." Again he turned away from her; he flung