room slowly, but she
ignored his gesture toward a chair. She stood looking down at him, her
face all the whiter for a touch of vivid color that burned in each
cheek, her arms hanging loosely at her sides but her hands clenched in
token of restrained emotion. Her voice was calm as ever when she
spoke, but passion lent it a husky quality that smote ominously on his
ear.

"What have you done to--my son?"

"Done to him? Done to him? What d'you mean?" He sputtered. "I
haven't _done_ anything to him!"

"You quarreled with him?"

"Call it that if you choose. He forced the issue--though he probably
went cry-babying to you with some other version!"

"He doesn't lie. And he told me just what I managed to drag out of
him--no more. I got the impression that he was--ashamed of you, that's
all."

"Well? I'll live it down, I guess! What do you expect me to do about
it?"

"The decent thing, just for once in your life. I want you to go to
him, or send for him, and--and make peace."

"You can see me doing it, can't you? Ha!"

"He has left our roof."

"His own choice!"

"You drove him to it."

"That's not so! He's free, white and twenty-one; he can do as he
pleases elsewhere, but he'll do as I say while he's in my house!"

"_My_ house, please!"

"We've had that argument before and you've had precious little change
out of it! As for Copley--let him rustle his own living or starve
until he learns to obey my wishes!"

"You won't consider mine?"

"No!" The word was like a thunderclap.

"Very well." She held herself erect to every inch of her slim height,
her steadfast gaze leveled at him from beneath straight brows. "I warn
you, Simon, that you are going too far. I don't know if you realize
all the brutalities, the ignominies, that I've suffered from you since
we were married. Much kinder if you'd beaten me. It hasn't seemed
possible to me that you can have realized--! Yours is a very curious
nature--I've had to make allowances--often--" Her voice faded into
silence.

"_What are you going to do about it?_"

She jumped beneath the lash of that crisp question.

"I don't know--_yet_." Abruptly, she turned on her heel and left the
room.

"That's that!" Simon swung back to his desk, a grim smile on his lips.
"It always boils down to the same thing--they don't know what they're
going to do about it. Let 'em rant all they please, in the end what I
say _goes_!"

He resumed his correspondence,