f."

"Dear old Marty, but you've got me forever!"

"No, I haven't. You're less mine now than you were when I only saw you
in dreams. But all the same you're my wife, and I tell you now, you
sha'n't be handled by a man like Palgrave."

They were in the middle of the floor. There were people all round them,
thickly. They were obliged to keep going in that lunatic movement or be
run down. What a way and in what a place to bare a bleeding heart!

For the first time since he had answered to her call and found her
standing clean-cut against the sky, Martin held Joan in his arms. His
joy in doing so was mixed with rage and jealousy. It had been worse
than a blow in the mouth suddenly to see her, of whom he had thought as
fast asleep in what was only the mere husk of home, dancing with a man
like Palgrave.

And her nearness maddened him. All the starved and pent-up passion that
was in him flamed and blazed. It blinded him and buzzed in his ears. He
held her so tight and so hungrily that she could hardly breathe. She
was his, this girl. She had called him, and he had answered, and she
was his wife. He had the right to her by law and nature. He adored her
and had let her off and tried to be patient and win his way to her by
love and gentleness. But with his lips within an inch of her sweet,
impertinent face, and the scent of her hair in his brain, and the wound
that she had opened again sapping his blood, he held her to his heart
and charged the crowd to the beat of the music, like a man intoxicated,
like a man heedless of his surroundings. He didn't give a curse who
overheard what he said, or saw the look in his eyes. She had turned him
down, this half-wife, on the plea of weariness; and as soon as he had
left the house to go and eat his heart out in the hub of that swarming
lonely city, she had darted out with this doll-man whom he wouldn't
have her touch with the end of a pole. There was a limit to all things,
and he had come to it.

"You're coming home," he said.

"Marty, but I can't. Gilbert Palgrave--"

"Gilbert Palgrave be damned. You're coming home, I tell you, if I have
to carry you out."

She laughed. This was a new Marty, a high-handed, fiery Marty--one who
must not be encouraged. "Are you often like this?" she asked.

"Be careful. I've had enough, and if you don't want me to smash this
place up and cause a riot, you'll do what I tell you."

Her eyes flashed back at him, and two angry spots of color came i