ng the
way a man is supposed to talk to a girl--but, hang it, if you don't like
it you can stop me quick enough--you know I'm mad about you--damn the
money, there's plenty more of it--if THAT bothers you . . . I was a
brute, Lily--Lily!--just look at me----"

Over and over her the sea of humiliation broke--wave crashing on wave so
close that the moral shame was one with the physical dread. It seemed to
her that self-esteem would have made her invulnerable--that it was her
own dishonour which put a fearful solitude about her.

His touch was a shock to her drowning consciousness. She drew back from
him with a desperate assumption of scorn.

"I've told you I don't understand--but if I owe you money you shall be
paid----"

Trenor's face darkened to rage: her recoil of abhorrence had called out
the primitive man.

"Ah--you'll borrow from Selden or Rosedale--and take your chances of
fooling them as you've fooled me! Unless--unless you've settled your
other scores already--and I'm the only one left out in the cold!"

She stood silent, frozen to her place. The words--the words were worse
than the touch! Her heart was beating all over her body--in her throat,
her limbs, her helpless useless hands. Her eyes travelled despairingly
about the room--they lit on the bell, and she remembered that help was in
call. Yes, but scandal with it--a hideous mustering of tongues. No, she
must fight her way out alone. It was enough that the servants knew her to
be in the house with Trenor--there must be nothing to excite conjecture
in her way of leaving it.

She raised her head, and achieved a last clear look at him.

"I am here alone with you," she said. "What more have you to say?"

To her surprise, Trenor answered the look with a speechless stare. With
his last gust of words the flame had died out, leaving him chill and
humbled. It was as though a cold air had dispersed the fumes of his
libations, and the situation loomed before him black and naked as the
ruins of a fire. Old habits, old restraints, the hand of inherited order,
plucked back the bewildered mind which passion had jolted from its ruts.
Trenor's eye had the haggard look of the sleep-walker waked on a deathly
ledge.

"Go home! Go away from here"----he stammered, and turning his back on her
walked toward the hearth.

The sharp release from her fears restored Lily to immediate lucidity.
The collapse of Trenor's will left her in control, and she heard herself,
in a voi