adful conversation, when, for whatever was left him of pluck or
confidence--confidence in what he would fain have called a little more
aggressively the strength of his position--he had judged best not to
take it up. But this time there was no question of not understanding, or
of pretending he didn't; the ugly, the awful words, ruthlessly formed
by her lips, were like the fingers of a hand that she might have thrust
into her pocket for extraction of the monstrous object that would serve
best for--what should he call it?--a gage of battle.

"If I haven't a very different answer from you within the next three
days I shall put the matter into the hands of my solicitor, whom it
may interest you to know I've already seen. I shall bring an action for
'breach' against you, Herbert Dodd, as sure as my name's Kate Cookham."

There it was, straight and strong--yet he felt he could say for himself,
when once it had come, or even, already, just as it was coming, that it
turned on, as if she had moved an electric switch, the very brightest
light of his own very reasons. There _she_ was, in all the grossness
of her native indelicacy, in all her essential excess of will and
destitution of scruple; and it was the woman capable of that ignoble
threat who, his sharper sense of her quality having become so quite
deterrent, was now making for him a crime of it that he shouldn't wish
to tie himself to her for life. The vivid, lurid thing was the reality,
all unmistakable, of her purpose; she had thought her case well out;
had measured its odious, specious presentability; had taken, he might
be sure, the very best advice obtainable at Properley, where there
was always a first-rate promptitude of everything fourth-rate; it was
disgustingly certain, in short, that she'd proceed. She was sharp
and adroit, moreover--distinctly in certain ways a master-hand; how
otherwise, with her so limited mere attractiveness, should she have
entangled him? He couldn't shut his eyes to the very probable truth that
if she should try it she'd pull it off. She _knew_ she would--precisely;
and her assurance was thus the very proof of her cruelty. That she
had pretended she loved him was comparatively nothing; other women had
pretended it, and other women too had really done it; but that she had
pretended he could possibly have been right and safe and blest in
loving _her_, a creature of the kind who could sniff that squalor of the
law-court, of claimed damages and