lumsy of you, wasn't
it?" Suave, gentle, sweet as honey was the speech of Margaret as she
lifted her face to his, but her eyes were tragedies.

"Ah!" said Billy. "Ah--yes--you think--that." He was very careful in
articulating his words, was Billy, and afterward he nodded his head
gravely. The universe had somehow suffered an airy dissolution like
that of Prospero's masque--Selwoode and its gardens, the great globe
itself, "the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces, the solemn
temples" were all as vanished wraiths. There was only Peggy left--
Peggy with that unimaginable misery in her eyes that he must drive
away somehow. If that was what she thought, there was no way for him
to prove it wasn't so.

"Why, dear me, Mr. Woods," she retorted, carelessly, "what else could
I think?"

Here Mr. Woods blundered.

"Ah, think what you will, Peggy!" he cried, his big voice cracking and
sobbing and resonant with pain. "Ah, my dear, think what you will, but
don't grieve for it, Peggy! Why, if I'm all you say I am, that's no
reason you should suffer for it! Ah, don't, Peggy! In God's name,
don't! I can't bear it, dear," he pleaded with her, helplessly.

Billy was suffering, too. But her sorrow was the chief of his, and
what stung him now to impotent anger was that she must suffer and he
be unable to help her--for, ah, how willingly, how gladly, he would
have borne all poor Peggy's woes upon his own broad shoulders.

But none the less, he had lost an invaluable opportunity to hold his
tongue.

"Suffer! I suffer!" she mocked him, languidly; and then, like a
banjo-string, the tension snapped, and she gave a long, angry gasp,
and her wrath flamed.

"Upon my word, you're the most conceited man I ever knew in my life!
You think I'm in love with you! With you! Billy Woods, I wouldn't wipe
my feet on you if you were the last man left on earth! I hate you, I
loathe you, I detest you, I despise you! Do you hear me?--I hate you.
What do I care if you _are_ a snob, and a cad, and a fortune-hunter,
and a forger, and--well, I don't care! Perhaps you haven't ever
forged anything yet, but I'm quite sure you would if you ever got an
opportunity. You'd be delighted to do it. Yes, you would--you're just
the sort of man who _revels_ in crime. I love you! Why, that's the
best joke I've heard for a long time. I'm only sorry for you, Billy
Woods--_sorry_ because Kathleen has thrown you over--sorry, do you
understand? Yes, since you're so fond