The sharp crack of her slamming door, loud in the quiet house, broke the spell which held him.  His mouth shut, and his clenched hands loosened from their fierce tension.  He took an aimless step and drew a long breath.  A moment later, quite automatically, he fumbled for his cigarette-case, and finding it, took out a cigarette and lighted it with fingers that were not steady.  The familiar action and the first puff of smoke affected him like emerging from a turmoil of darkness into the quiet and order of a well-lighted room.  “Well, may I be damned!” he said to himself with the beginning of a return of his usual assurance—­“the damn little spitfire!”

He walked about the room, puffing vigorously, feeling with relief his blood resume its usual rate of circulation.  His head seemed to clear of a thick vapor.  The startling recollection of the anger in his fiancee’s eyes was fading rapidly from his mind.  Now he only saw her, blushing, recoiling, fleeing—­he laughed out a little, this time not angrily, but with relish.  “Ain’t she the firebrand!” he said aloud.  He found his desire for her a hundredfold enhanced and stood still, his eyes very lustrous, feeling again in imagination the warm softness of her bosom under his lips.  “Gee!” he exclaimed, turning restlessly in his pacing walk.

He was aware that some one in the room moved.  “Jermain,” said his stepmother’s faint voice.  He looked at her smiling.  “Hello, Momma,” he said good-naturedly, “when did you gum-shoe in?”

“Oh, just now,” she told him, giving him an assurance which he doubted, and which he would not have valued had he known it to be true.  He was perfectly indifferent as to the chance that this negligible person might have been a spectator to the scene between the son of the house and a guest.  If she said anything about it, he meant to give the all-sufficing explanation that he and Miss Marshall had just become engaged.  This would of course, it seemed self-evident to him, make it all right.

But Mrs. Fiske did not make any remark calling forth that information.  She only said, in her usual listless manner, “Your sleeve is shoved up.”

He glanced down in surprise, realizing how excited he must be not to have noticed that before, and remained for a moment silent, looking at the splendidly muscular white arm, and the large well-manicured hand.  He was feeling in every nerve the reminiscence of the yielding firmness of Sylvia’s flesh, bare against his own.  The color came up flamingly into his face again.  He moistened his lips with his tongue.  “Jesus Christ!” he exclaimed, contemptuously careless of his listener, “I’m wild in love with that girl!” He pulled his sleeve down with a quick, vigorous gesture, deftly shot the cuff out beyond the black broadcloth, and, the picture of handsome, well-groomed youth in easy circumstances, turned again to his father’s wife.  “What you in here for, anyhow?” he asked still with his light absence of concern about anything she did or did not do.