y her daughter, and when no evidence to support this was
forthcoming he was driven to appeal to the cupidity which he believed
occupies the heart of every middle-aged, hard-worked woman. But these
statements also were received with a dreadful composure. He could have
smashed Mrs. Makebelieve where she stood. Now and again his body
strained to a wild, physical outburst, a passionate, red fury that
would have terrified these women to their knees, while he roared their
screams into thin whimpers as a man should. He did not even dare to
stop speaking, and his efforts at an easy, good-humored, half-careless
presentation of his case was bitterly painful to him as it was to his
auditors. The fact that they were both standing up unnerved him
also--the pleasant equality which should have formed the atmosphere of
such an interview was destroyed from the first moment, and, having
once sat down, he did not like to stand up again. He felt glued to the
bed on which he sat, and he felt also that if he stood up the tension
in the room would so relax that Mrs. Makebelieve would at once break
out into speech sarcastic and final, or her daughter might scream
reproaches and disclaimers of an equal finality. At her he did not
dare to look, but the corner of his eye could see her shape stiffened
against the fireplace, an attitude so different from the pliable
contours to which he was accustomed in her as almost to be repellant.
He would have thanked God to find himself outside the room, but how to
get out of it he did not know: his self-esteem forbade anything like a
retreat without honor, his nervousness did not permit him to move at
all, the anger which prickled the surface of his body and mind was
held in check only by an instinct of fear as to what he might do if he
moved, and so, with dreadful jocularity, he commenced to speak of
himself, his personal character, his sobriety and steadiness--of all
those safe negations on which many women place reliance he spoke, and
also of certain small vices which he magnified merely for the sake of
talking, such as smoking, an odd glass of porter and the shilling
which, now and again, he had ventured upon a race horse.

Mary listened to him for a while with angry intentness. The fact that
she was the subject of his extraordinary discourse quickened at the
first all her apprehensions. Had the matter been less important she
would have been glad to look at herself in this strange position, and
to savor,