Page:The Yellow Book - 07.djvu/347

 of importance—business about which I've taken the trouble to pay you this altogether distasteful visit?"

But Le Mesurier merely opened the door, and with a gesture invited Shergold to pass out. His expression was so menacing, his gesture might so easily have transformed itself into the preparation for a blow, that Shergold instinctively moved towards the threshold.

"You refuse to consider the matter?" he asked.

"Let Lily send the boy, and I'll consider it."

"That's your last word?"

"No!" shouted Le Mesurier, suddenly losing all control of himself. "Go to Hell, you sneaking Jesuit! That's my last word." Then, finding a certain childish joy in the mere calling of names—the mere utterance of his hate, his fury: "You empty wind-bag! You low-bred pedant! You bloated mass of self-conceit! Go to Hell!"

And he flung the door to, in Shergold's astonished face.

Le Mesurier stood alone in the cottage, shaken by impotent rage. His thoughts followed Shergold going away; unsuccessful, indeed, but superior, calm, self-satisfied; full of a lofty contempt, a Pharisaic pity, for Le Mesurier's violence, for his childishness, his ineffectual profanity, his miserable mode of life. Le Mesurier could imagine Shergold telling Lily of her husband's churlish refusal to discuss the business that had taken him to Saint Maclou; of the impossible condition he had imposed; of his dirty surroundings, his neglected appearance, his brutal language, his ungovernable temper. Le Mesurier saw the disgust such a narration would inspire in his wife, the fresh justification she would find in it for all her past conduct. And he imagined how, while Shergold and Lily