"An engagement? You, with no chaperon, to go to a common ball at a
public room! An engagement. Yes, with your lover, I presume."

She looked at him steadily, and yawned in his face.

"You are in a bad temper, I fear," she said. "At least, you are very
rude. Let me pass, will you? I am tired of standing here."

He was beside himself with passion, and for a second or two he did not
speak. But when at last the words came, they were clear and distinct
enough.

"Into this house you shall never pass again," he said. "You have
disregarded my wishes, you have disobeyed my orders, and now you are
deceiving me. You are trifling with my honor. You are bringing shame
upon my name. Go and keep your assignations from another roof. Mine has
sheltered your intrigues long enough!"

The hand which had kept together her opera-cloak relinquished its grasp,
and it fell back upon her shoulders. The whole beauty of her sinuous
figure, in its garb of dazzling white, stood revealed. The moonlight
gleamed in her fair hair, bound up with one glittering gem, shone softly
upon her white swelling throat and bare arms, and flashed in her dark
eyes, suddenly full of passion. Her right hand was nervously clasped
around a little morsel of lace handkerchief which she had drawn from the
folds of her corsage, and which seemed to make the air around heavy with
a sweet perfume.

"You are angry, and you do not know what you are saying," she said. "It
is true that you forbade me to go to-night--but you forbid everything. I
cannot live your life. It is too dull, too _triste_. It is cruel of you
to expect it. Let me go in now. If you want to scold, you can do so
to-morrow."

She stepped forward, but he laid his hands upon her dainty shoulders and
pushed her roughly back.

"Never!" he cried savagely. "Go and live what life you choose. This is
no home for you. Go, I say!"

She looked at him, her lovely eyes turned pleadingly upwards, and her
lips trembling.

"You are mad!" she said. "Am I not your wife? You have no right to keep
me here. And my boy, too. Let me pass."

He did not move, nor did he show any sign of yielding. He stood there
with his hand stretched out in a threatening gesture toward her, his
face pale and mute as marble, but with the blind rage still burning in
his dark eyes.

"What is the boy, or what am I to you?" he cried hoarsely. "Begone,
woman!"

Still she did not seem to understand.

"Where would you have me go?" she asked.