tstool to his feet and sat looking
beseechingly up at him. But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the
flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and
jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him. And he saw her now
as middle-aged, as beginning to be old. Even while he detested his own
thoughts, they rode him. She was old, he winced. Old! He noted how the
soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her
eyes, at the base of her wrists. A patch of her throat had a minute
roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser. Old! She was younger in
years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him
with rolling great eyes--as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making
love to him.

He fretted inwardly, "I'm through with this asinine fooling around. I'm
going to cut her out. She's a darn decent nice woman, and I don't want
to hurt her, but it'll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good
clean surgical operation."

He was on his feet. He was speaking urgently. By every rule of
self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her
fault.

"I suppose maybe I'm kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey,
when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and
figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited
till I came back. Can't you see, dear, when you MADE me come, I--being
about an average bull-headed chump--my tendency was to resist? Listen,
dear, I'm going now--"

"Not for a while, precious! No!"

"Yep. Right now. And then sometime we'll see about the future."

"What do you mean, dear, 'about the future'? Have I done something I
oughtn't to? Oh, I'm so dreadfully sorry!"

He resolutely put his hands behind him. "Not a thing, God bless you, not
a thing. You're as good as they make 'em. But it's just--Good Lord, do
you realize I've got things to do in the world? I've got a business to
attend to and, you might not believe it, but I've got a wife and kids
that I'm awful fond of!" Then only during the murder he was committing
was he able to feel nobly virtuous. "I want us to be friends but, gosh,
I can't go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often--"

"Oh, darling, darling, and I've always told you, so carefully, that you
were absolutely free. I just wanted you to come around when you were
tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties--"

She was so reasona