ut you has got part nor lot in
him--if you turn ag'inst him, I turn ag'inst you. An' when I've done
that, you'll find me as crazy as you be, an' I can't say no worse."

She went into the bedroom and he heard her crooning there, defiantly he
thought, even through the low sweetness of her voice. But her passion
had shaken him briefly. For the moment, the inner self in him could not
help believing her. He went back to his newspaper, trying, though the
print was dim before him, to recover his hold on the commonplace of the
day. He, too, would be unmoved; she should see he was not afraid of her
tantrums. But he had not read half a column before an evil chance drew
his eyes to a paragraph in the gossip from the various towns about. This
was under the caption of his own town:

"A certain gentleman appeared last week with a black eye, gained, it is
said, in a scrap with a non-resident interested in keeping the peace in
country towns. It is said both combatants bore themselves gallantly, but
that suit for assault and battery is to be brought by the party
attacked."

Tenney sat staring at the words, and his mind told him what a fool he
was. That meant the encounter at his gate. He had ignored that. He had
been deflected from it simply because he had cut his foot and let
himself be drawn off the track of plain testimony by his own pain and
helplessness. Was Raven in it, too? Was there a shameless assault of all
the men about on Tira's honesty? While he was the dupe of Martin, was
Martin Raven's dupe? Did such a woman bring perpetual ruin in her path?
This he did not ask himself in such words or indeed through any
connected interrogation. It was passion within him, disordered, dim, but
horrible to bear. He got up presently, took her scissors, cut out the
paragraph and laid it on her basket where her eyes must fall upon it.
When he had gone back to his chair, she appeared from the bedroom and
went up to him. He did not look at her, but her voice was sweeter,
gentler than the song had been, with no defiance in it, and, in spite of
him, it moved his sick heart, not to belief in her, or even a momentary
rest on her good intent toward him, but to a misery he could hardly
face. Every nerve in him cried out in revolt against his lot, his aching
love for her, his passion forever unsatisfied because she was not
entirely his, the anguish of the atom tossed about in the welter of
elemental life.

"Isr'el," said she, "there's one thing we