was a queer, new Morris staring at her. She might have
been a phonograph that contained some record important to him, for all
the consciousness of her personality in his blank stare. He looked at
her a good deal as a man looks at the nearest object when coming to
after a severe blow on the head. This stare of his irritated Belinda and
rather scared her at the same time. Had she gone too far? What was there
in it so shocking for Morry, since he loved _her_, Belinda? She had
thought that he would jump at the easy solution of their problem that it
afforded.

She went up to him, and laid her hand on his breast.

"Wake up, Morry...." she said. "Why in the world should you take it like
this? You look positively doped...."

Morris caught her hand in a grip that was too painful, even for
Belinda's amorous temperament. She gave an angry little miaul of pain.

"Linda ... you little fiend!..." he was saying hoarsely. "You've made
this up.... I know you ... all the tricks of the trade.... What d'you
mean by it, eh? What do you mean by slandering my wife?..." He shook her
to and fro. "Eh?... Tell me that.... What d'you mean?... How d'you
dare?... Eh?... Tell me that...."

Belinda gave him back his savage looks full measure.

"You're a fool...." she sobbed, raging. "You're just a common or garden
fool, Morry! I can't help that, can I? Let me go!... It's not my fault
if you're a fool ... a fool ... a fool...."

He flung her from him so that she stumbled. He saw red ... black ... red
again. He felt choking--murderous. Mere sensual love runs like this,
from desire to hate and back again, to and fro, "swifter than a weaver's
shuttle." At the present moment he had only hate for Belinda. She
herself had lashed awake his jealousy for another woman by her
miscalculated cunning. Sophy was his--_his_. How dare she so much as
look at another man? And this little devil dared to say that she
loved.... He was really transfigured by rage. Even Belinda the dauntless
shrank from him. She had unstopped a very small vessel of malice and out
of it had arisen a black smoke obscuring all her golden heaven of love,
and congealing before her into this fierce, wry-faced Afrit of a man.
She had never seen the male in the grip of real jealousy before--the
man-tiger sensing the defection of his mate. It horrified her,
infuriated her, filled her with a curiously helpless sense of dismay.

He turned suddenly and strode away from her. Then she found her v