a, glad of any diversion, went and
opened it.

"I say, kid, keep your boss quiet if you can," whispered Mrs. King. "My
young chaps down below can't get their proper sleep for that row, and
they've got a hard day's work before them if he hasn't."

"Mrs. King, whatever am I to do with him?" she cried frantically. "I
don't believe he knows it's me. And he's so horribly dirty."

"Oh, go an' sit on his knee a bit, kid, and make up to him. That's the
best way to make them go quiet. He's at the vulgar stage to-night, your
boss is. But do keep him quiet. Not that I'm not sorry for you, kid,"
she added, as she turned away. "They're beasts, men are. Mine's asleep
as it happens."

He was still raving, saying disgusting things that, unfortunately, were
in English this time. Looking at him in the candlelight she felt
terrified of him and utterly unable to treat him as a sick man and not a
wicked one. As she stood there stiff, unable through sheer disgust to
get any nearer to him, he clutched at her nightgown and drew her nearer.
She felt frantic; her nails cut into her hands as she gripped them
together as if for the comforting feel of a hand in hers.

"Why should I have this disgust happen to me? It's too dirty to ask
women to get men to sleep like this."

Then, amidst all the searing things he was saying, came the memories of
those cries in the night at the farm and she wondered breathlessly if
this sort of thing could have happened to her mother. And, at that
moment she knew that it had not. Her father might, quite possibly, have
almost killed her mother by his violent rages. But he could never have
been merely disgusting. She looked at him again and felt murderous; a
passion to put him out of life, to stamp upon him and finish him flooded
up and burst and died all in an instant. She realized in that quiet
instant that this passionate disgust was utterly selfish; if he had been
loathsome with any other disease than this she would have nursed and
soothed him tenderly; if he had been clean and charming, as on the night
of the aurora.

"Oh, what a hypocrite you are, Marcella Lashcairn!" she said. "With all
your high-falutin' ideas of balance and coolness! You've been
luxuriating in the thought of martyrdom all the time you've been
fighting the enchantment of this wretched love-making! You've not been
fighting it a bit, really! It's only now, when it's disgusting and
beastly and--not a bit enchanting, that you're fighting it!