nd uncalculated as the leap of
some enraged primitive creature. His ungloved fist struck with an impact
sounding like the slap of an open hand, and flung the man crashing
through the hedge of lilac-bushes to roll over and over on the ground,
clutching blindly at the turf strewn with broken leaf-buds.

"Corrie!" Gerard cried stern warning, too late, starting from his seat.

Corrie swung about, his blue eyes blazing in his flushed face, his lips
parted in a scarlet line across the white gleam of his set teeth.

"If he comes near me again, I'll _kill_ him!" he panted savagely.

"It seems to me you have done enough of that sort of thing, already,"
Gerard retorted, equally angered.

The biting reminder was not premeditated; it leaped out of brief wrath
and all the aching memories stirred by the episode. But it was none the
less effective. Gerard himself did not realize how effective until he
saw all the color and animation wiped from the young face and saw Corrie
put his hand across his eyes.

"Corrie!" he exclaimed, cut deeply by his own cruelty, amazedly furious
with himself. "Corrie----"

Corrie had turned his back to him, not in offence, but as a woman would
cover her face. He answered without moving.

"It's--all right. I understand; it is--all right."

Gerard left the car, more humiliated in his own sight than he ever had
been in his life. For the moment his own lack of self-control loomed
larger than Corrie's, past or present.

"Corrie, I said what I did not mean," he appealed, laying his hand on
the other's shoulder. "Forgive me. Don't take it like this!"

Corrie slowly turned to him.

"There isn't anything you can say to me, that I can complain of," he
checked apology, quietly serious. "It is all right, of course. I--no one
can understand just what it was like to hear him talk that way to me, no
one can, ever. But I should not have struck him."

The expression in his eyes as they encountered Gerard's was not of
remorse or shame, or resentment, was not any mingling of these, but
simply of utter loneliness patiently accepted. Gerard stood back in
silence, helplessly aware of having inflicted a hurt no contrition could
heal.

The man was sitting up, dazed and bruised, his stupid gaze following his
assailant. To him Corrie went, dragging forth a handful of paper money.

"Keep away from me," the victor cautioned with harsh dislike. "I mean
it. Here, take this and go. I'm giving it to you because I knocked