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“You little fool, ha’ done with it,” he said. “And you’ll backfire them stockings, I’m telling you. ” He was angry. His face flushed dark, he kept his head bent. She ceased to dance.

“I shan’t,” she said. “They’ll come in very useful. ”

He lifted his head and watched her, with lighted, dangerous eyes.

“You’ll put ’em on the fire back, I tell you,” he said.

It was a war now. She bent forward, in a ballet-dancer’s fashion, and put her tongue between her teeth.

“I shan’t backfire them stockings,” she sang, repeating his words, “I shan’t, I shan’t, I shan’t. ”

And she danced round the room doing a high kick to the tune of her words. There was a real biting indifference in her behaviour.

“We’ll see whether you will or not,” he said, “trollops! You’d like Sam Adams to know you was wearing ’em, wouldn’t you? That’s what would please you. ”

“Yes, I’d like him to see how nicely they fit me, he might give me some more then. ”

And she looked down at her pretty legs.

He knew somehow that she wouldlike Sam Adams to see how pretty her legs looked in the white stockings. It made his anger go deep, almost to hatred.

“Yer nasty trolley,” he cried. “Put yer petticoats down, and stop being so foul-minded. ”

“I’m not foul-minded,” she said. “My legs are my own. And why shouldn’t Sam Adams think they’re nice?”

There was a pause. He watched her with eyes glittering to a point.

“Have you been havin’ owt to do with him?” he asked.

“I’ve just spoken to him when I’ve seen him,” she said. “He’s not as bad as you would make out. ”

“Isn’t he?” he cried, a certain wakefulness in his voice. “Them who has anything to do wi’ him is too bad for me, I tell you. ”

“Why, what are you frightened of him for?” she mocked.

She was rousing all his uncontrollable anger. He sat glowering. Every one of her sentences stirred him up like a red-hot iron. Soon it would be too much. And she was afraid herself; but she was neither conquered nor convinced.

A curious little grin of hate came on his face. He had a long score against her.

“What am I frightened of him for?” he repeated automatically. “What am I frightened of him for? Why, for you, you stray-running little bitch. ”

She flushed. The insult went deep into her, right home.

“Well, if you’re so dull—” she said, lowering her eyelids, and speaking coldly, haughtily.

“If I’m so dull I’ll break your neck the first word you speak to him,” he said, tense.

“Pf!” she sneered. “Do you think I’m frightened of you?” She spoke coldly, detached.

She was frightened, for all that, white round the mouth.

His heart was getting hotter.

“You willbe frightened of me, the next time you have anything to do with him,” he said.

“Do you think you’dever be told—ha!”

Her jeering scorn made him go white-hot, molten. He knew he was incoherent, scarcely responsible for what he might do. Slowly, unseeing, he rose and went out of doors, stifled, moved to kill her.

He stood leaning against the garden fence, unable either to see or hear. Below him, far off, fumed the lights of the town. He stood still, unconscious with a black storm of rage, his face lifted to the night.

Presently, still unconscious of what he was doing, he went indoors again. She stood, a small stubborn figure with tight-pressed lips and big, sullen, childish eyes, watching him, white with fear. He went heavily across the floor and dropped into his chair.

There was a silence.

“You’renot going to tell me everything I shall do, and everything I shan’t,” she broke out at last.