the least, sat up and pointed
to the door.

"Go!" she said. "Go. You're nothing but a brute."

Jaffery rose from his knees and regarded her in the hebetude of
reaction.

"I suppose I am, Doria, but it's my way of loving you."

She still pointed. "Go," she said tonelessly. "I can't turn you out, but
if Adrian was alive--Ha! ha! ha!--" she laughed with a touch of
hysteria. "How do you dare, you barren rascal--how do you dare to think
you can take the place of a man like Adrian?"

[Illustration: "Go! You are nothing but a brute."]

The whip of her tongue lashed him to sudden fury. He picked her up
bodily and held her in spite of struggles, just as you or I would hold a
cat or a rabbit.

"You little fool," said he, "don't you know the difference between a man
and a--"

Realisation of the tragedy struck him as a spent bullet might have
struck him on the side of the head. He turned white.

"All right," said he in a changed voice. "Easy on. I'm not going to hurt
you."

He deposited her gently on the sofa and strode out of the room.

CHAPTER XVII

If the old song be true which says that it is not so much the lover who
woos as the lover's way of wooing, Jaffery seemed to have thrown away
his chances by adopting a very unfortunate way indeed. Doria proved to
Barbara, urgently summoned to a bed of prostration and nervous collapse,
that she would never set eyes again upon the unqualifiable savage by
whom her holiest sentiments had been outraged and her person
disgracefully mishandled. She poured out a blood-curdling story into
semi-sympathetic ears. Barbara made short work of her contention that
Jaffery ought to have respected her as he would have respected the wife
of a living friend, characterising it as morbid and indecent nonsense;
and with regard to the physical violence she declared that it would have
served her right had he smacked her.

"If you want to be faithful to the memory of your first husband, be
faithful," she said. "No one can prevent you. And if a good man comes
along with an honourable proposal of marriage, tell him in an honourable
way why you can't marry him. But don't accept for months all a man has
to give, and then, when he tells you what you've known perfectly well
all along, treat him as if he were making shameful proposals to
you--especially a man like Jaffery; I have no patience with you."

Doria wept. No one understood her. No one understood Adrian. No one
understood the bond