e panted, "sit down like a man and tell me what you are going
to do about it? Look up--dawling!" she cried, as Van Dorn slumped in the
chair.

The man gave her a look of hate. His eyes, that showed his soul, burned
with rage and from his face, so mobile and expressive, a devil of malice
gaped impotently at his wife, as he sat, a heap of weak vanity, before
her. He pulled himself up and exclaimed:

"Well, there's one thing damn sure, I'll not live with you any more--no
man would respect me if I did after to-night."

"And no man," she smiled and said in her mocking voice, "will respect
you if you leave me. How Laura's friends will laugh when you go, and say
that Tom Van Dorn simply can't live with any one. How the Nesbit crowd
will titter when you leave me, and say Tom Van Dorn got just what he had
coming! Why--go on--leave me--if you dare! You know you don't dare to.
It's for better or worse, Tom, until death do us part--dawling!"

She laughed and winked indecently at him.

"I will leave you, I tell you, I will leave you," he burst forth, half
rising. "All the devils of hell can't keep me here."

"Except just this one," she mocked. "Oh, you might leave me and go with
your present mistress! By the way, who is our latest conquest--dawling?
I'm sure that would be fine. Wouldn't they cackle--the dear old hens
whose claws scratch your heart so every day?" She leaned over, caressing
him devilishly, and cried, "For you know when you get loose from me,
you'll pretty nearly have to marry the other lady--wouldn't that be
nice? 'Through sickness and health, for good or for ill,'--isn't it
nice?" she scoffed. Then she turned on him savagely, "So you will try to
hide behind a child, and use him for a shield--Oh, you cur--you
despicable dog," she scorned. Then she drew herself up and spoke in a
passion that all but hissed at him. "I tell you, Tom Van Dorn, if you
ever, in this row that's coming, harm a hair of that boy's head--you'll
carry the scar of that hair to your grave. I mean it."

Van Dorn sprang up. He cried: "What business is it of yours? You she
devil, what's the boy to you? Can't I run my own business? Why do you
care so much for the Adams brat? Answer me, I tell you--answer me," he
cried, his wrath filling his voice.

"Oh, nothing, dawling," she made a wicked, obscene eye at him, and
simpered: "Oh, nothing, Tom--only you see I might be his mother!"

She played with the vulgar diamonds that hid her fingers and loo