with an effort to his feet--"what are
you going to do for me?"

His aspect had altered, had assumed a sinister and passionate intensity.
His sister was conscious of the menace in it, and hastily taking up a
small hand-bag lying near her, she produced a purse from it.

"I have saved twenty pounds for you--out of my own money--with _great_
difficulty," she said, with indignant emphasis. "If I were to tell
Richard, he would be furious. And I cannot--do--_anything_--more for you,
beyond the allowance I give you. Everything you suffer from, you have
brought upon, yourself. It is hopeless to try and help you."

He laughed.

"Well, then, I must try Rachel!" he said carelessly, as he looked for his
hat.

"That I think would be the lowest depth!" said Lady Winton, breathing
quick, "to beg money from the wife who divorced you!"

"I am ready to beg for money--requisition is the better word--from
anybody in the world who has more of it than I. I am a Bolshevist. You
needn't talk to me about property, or rights. I don't acknowledge them.
I want something that you've got, and I haven't. I shall take it if I
find the opportunity--civilly if I can, uncivilly, if I must."

Lady Winton made no reply. She stood, a statue of angry patience waiting
for him to go. He slowly buttoned on his coat, and then stepped coolly
across the room to look at an enlarged photograph of a young soldier
standing on the piano.

"Handsome chap! You're in luck, Marianne. I suppose you managed to get
him into a staff job of some sort, out of harm's way?"

He turned to her with a sneer on his lips. His sister was still silent.

The man moving about the room was perhaps the thing she feared and
hated most in the world. Every scene of this kind--and he forced them
on her, in spite of her futile resistance, at fairly frequent
intervals--represented to her an hour of torture and humiliation. How to
hide the scenes and the being who caused them, from her husband, her
servants, her friends, was becoming almost her chief preoccupation.
She was beginning to be afraid of her brother. For some time she had
regarded him as incipiently insane, and as she watched him this evening
he seemed to her more than ever charged with sinister possibilities. It
appeared to be impossible to influence or frighten him; and she realized
that as he seemed not to care a fig whether she caused a scandal or not,
and she cared with every pulse of her being, she was really in his powe