tongue," said Adam: "I've told you I'm goin' to
stop here. Be off with you, now!"

But Joan, bent on striving to keep him from an excess to which she saw
exasperation was goading him, made one more effort. "Awh, Adam," she
said, "do 'ee come now. Eve--"

"Eve be--"

But before the word had well escaped his lips Joan's hand was clapped
over his mouth. Too late, for Eve had come up behind them, and as Adam
turned his head to shake Joan off he found himself face to face before
her, and the look of outraged love she fixed upon him made his heart
quail within him. What could he do? what should he say? Nothing now,
for before he could gather up his senses she had passed by him and was
gone.

A sickening feeling came over Adam, and he could barely put his lips to
the glass which, in order to avert attention, he had caught up and
raised to his mouth. At a blow all the resolutions he had forced
himself to were upset and scattered, for he had returned with the
reckless determination of plunging into whatever dissipation chanced to
be going on.

He had roamed about, angry and tormented, until the climax of passion
was succeeded by an overpowering sense of gloom, to get away from which
he had determined to abandon himself, and, flinging all restraint
aside, sink down to that level over which the better part of his nature
had vainly tried to soar. But now, in the feeling of degradation which
Eve's eyes had flashed upon him, the grossness of these excesses came
freshly before him, and the knowledge that even in thought he had
entertained them made him feel lowered in his own eyes; and if in his
eyes, how must he look in hers?

Without a movement he knew every time that she entered the room: he
heard her exchange words with some of those present, applaud a song of
Barnabas Tadd's, answer a question of Uncle Zebedee's, and, sharpest
thorn of all, stand behind Jerrem's chair, talking to him while some of
the roughest hits were being made at his own mistaken judgment in
holding back those who were ready to have "sunk the Looe boats and all
aboard 'em."

In the anguish of his heart Adam could have cried aloud. It seemed to
him that until now he had never tasted the bitterness of love nor
smarted under the sharp tooth of jealousy. There were lapses when,
sending a covert look across the table, those around him faded away and
only Eve and Jerrem stood before him, and while he gazed a harsh,
discordant laugh would break the spell,