Never had Bennett seemed more out of place than in this almost dainty
breakfast-room, with its small, feminine appurtenances, its fragile
glassware, its pots of flowers and growing plants. The incongruous
surroundings emphasized his every roughness, his every angularity.
Against its background of delicate, mild tints his figure loomed
suddenly colossal; the great span of his chest and shoulders seemed
never so huge. His face; the great, brutal jaw, with its aggressive,
bullying, forward thrust; the close-gripped lips, the contracted
forehead, the small eyes, marred with the sharply defined cast, appeared
never so harsh, never so massive, never so significant of the
resistless, crude force of the man, his energy, his overpowering
determination. As he towered there before her, one hand gripped upon a
chair-back, it seemed to her that the hand had but to close to crush the
little varnished woodwork to a splinter, and when he spoke Lloyd could
imagine that the fine, frail china of the table vibrated to the
deep-pitched bass of his voice.

Lloyd had only to look at him once to know that Bennett was at the
moment aroused and agitated to an extraordinary degree. His face was
congested and flaming. Under his frown his eyes seemed flashing
veritable sparks; his teeth were set; in his temple a vein stood
prominent and throbbing. But Lloyd was not surprised. Bennett had, no
doubt, heard of Ferriss's desperate illness. Small wonder he was excited
when the life of his dearest friend was threatened. Lloyd could ignore
her own quarrel with Bennett at such a moment.

"I am so sorry," she began, "that you could not have known sooner. But
you remember you left no address. There was--"

"What are you doing here?" he broke in abruptly. "What is the
use--why--" he paused for a moment to steady his voice--"you can't stay
here," he went on. "Don't you know the risk you are running? You can't
stay here another moment."

"That," answered Lloyd, smiling, "is a matter that is interesting
chiefly to me. I suppose you know that, Mr. Bennett."

"I know that you are risking your life and--"

"And that, too, is my affair."

"I have made it mine," he responded quickly. "Oh," he exclaimed sharply,
striking the back of the chair with his open palm, "why must we always
be at cross-purposes with each other? I'm not good at talking. What is
the use of tangling ourselves with phrases? I love you, and I've come
out here to ask you, to beg you, you u