im. As he swept the table over with
a crash and wrenched the chair from her hand (and he took his strength
for it) he became aware that the angry excitement behind his back, the
threatening babel, had subsided to long-drawn sighs of pity, and
realised with a sort of disgusted relief that the blow he had himself
suffered from this panting, writhing maenad had somehow changed the
situation and that he was an object of horrified sympathy. Mercifully,
the room was scantily filled, for it was early, and his curt
explanation was accepted in respectful silence.

"Mademoiselle is--is not responsible for her act, I beg you to
believe," he said grimly, white with humiliation and pain. "I beg you
will accept ..."

The two waiters pocketed a week's earnings in voluble deprecation, the
proprietor shrugged his excitement away into an admirable regret, the
diners wrenched their eyes from Margarita's face and affected to see
nothing as Roger buttoned her cheapish vague-coloured jacket around
her and ordered her sternly to straighten her hat. Her fingers
literally trembled with rage, her soft, round breasts, strangely
distinct in outline to his fingers as he strained the tight jacket
over them, rose and fell stormily; in a troubled flash of memory he
seemed to be handling some throbbing, shot bird. His own clumsiness
and strange, heady elation he attributed to the shock of the wine in
his face.

In an incredibly short time the table was upright, the debris removed,
the room, except for the indefinable, electric sense of recent tragedy
that hovers over such scenes, much as it had been. Roger had carried,
fortunately for him, a light overcoat on his arm, and this would hide
his white, stained triangle of vest with a little management.
Grasping Margarita by the arm he led her out of the room, and for the
first time questioned her.

"Are you mad?" he muttered. "What do you mean by such a performance?"

"That man," she answered, her voice vibrating like a swept
violoncello, "is a devil. Did you not see what he gave me? It was not
food at all, but freezing snow. Snow should not be in a glass, but on
the ground. It is plain that he wishes to kill me."

Her resonant voice filled every corner of the room; it was impossible
for anyone in it to miss the situation, and with a sudden inspiration
Roger spoke with a special distinctness to the proprietor, noticing
that the dozen persons at the tables were obviously French, and using
that langu