rms a real bull. He stood over her,
hands in pockets, "to keep from wringing her neck," he told himself.

"Look here," he said. "I suppose you mean me to believe you love that
bounder?"

"Why no---- What d'you take me for?" she said, a lump of sugar in one
cheek. She crunched down on it contentedly with the last words.

"Better not ask what I take you for," said Loring hotly. "You're a cool
hand, Linda; but I don't think you'd stay cool if I formulated my
opinion of you."

"And I wonder if _you'd_ stay _at all_ if I gave _my_ opinion of _you_?"
asked she, grinning.

Loring clenched his hands that he still kept in his pockets.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that you're going to marry this
brute without loving him?"

"Oh, well.... Marriage 'makes the heart grow fonder,' they say," she
retorted easily.

"Good God!... How dare you say such things to me ... to _me_?" burst out
Loring furiously.

"And why not 'to you ... to _you_'?" she mimicked.

She slid suddenly from the edge of the table on which she had been
perched, and went up close in front of him. The garnet fire blazed in
her eyes now. Her black brows were drawn down close over them.

"See here, Morry," she said. "I'll give you a straight tip: You can't
play dog-in-the-manger with _me_. You can behave decently to me or ...
clear out!"

It was Loring's turn to laugh.

"'Clear out'?" he exclaimed. "Well, of all the cool minxes!-- '_Clear
out_' did you say? ... from my own mother's house?... I'd like to know
how you mean to accomplish it?"

Belinda gave him a look of supreme and contemptuous insolence.

"_I'll tell Lewis the truth about you_," said she.

Then Loring "saw red." Without a word, he seized her in his arms.

"Aren't you afraid to say such things to me?" he demanded thickly.
"Aren't you afraid...?"

"No," said Belinda. But just for a second she was afraid. There had been
such a gleam of dementia in his eyes.

"Yes, you are afraid," he said, still holding her fast. "Little devil
... you _are_ afraid.... And you need be ... you need be...." He laughed
cruelly. "If I were an Oriental," he went on, "I'd cut off your lips for
having let another man touch them...." His face suffused suddenly. He
bent it down over hers. "Give them to me all the same...." he muttered.
"Give me your lips, Linda. They're mine...."

For answer, she pressed them inward until they were only a thin mark in
her face. Her eyes glittered up at him, defiant, re