He had to assure her.  She stroked his hair, and he had to look pleased under that touch, the more demanding in its beguiling softness.  He was impatient.  He wanted to flee out to a hard, sure, unemotional man-world.  Through her delicate and caressing fingers she may have caught something of his shrugging distaste.  She left him—­he was for the moment buoyantly relieved—­she dragged a footstool to his feet and sat looking beseechingly up at him.  But as in many men the cringing of a dog, the flinching of a frightened child, rouse not pity but a surprised and jerky cruelty, so her humility only annoyed him.  And he saw her now as middle-aged, as beginning to be old.  Even while he detested his own thoughts, they rode him.  She was old, he winced.  Old!  He noted how the soft flesh was creasing into webby folds beneath her chin, below her eyes, at the base of her wrists.  A patch of her throat had a minute roughness like the crumbs from a rubber eraser.  Old!  She was younger in years than himself, yet it was sickening to have her yearning up at him with rolling great eyes—­as if, he shuddered, his own aunt were making love to him.

He fretted inwardly, “I’m through with this asinine fooling around.  I’m going to cut her out.  She’s a darn decent nice woman, and I don’t want to hurt her, but it’ll hurt a lot less to cut her right out, like a good clean surgical operation.”

He was on his feet.  He was speaking urgently.  By every rule of self-esteem, he had to prove to her, and to himself, that it was her fault.

“I suppose maybe I’m kind of out of sorts to-night, but honest, honey, when I stayed away for a while to catch up on work and everything and figure out where I was at, you ought to have been cannier and waited till I came back.  Can’t you see, dear, when you made me come, I—­being about an average bull-headed chump—­my tendency was to resist?  Listen, dear, I’m going now—­”

“Not for a while, precious!  No!”

“Yep.  Right now.  And then sometime we’ll see about the future.”

“What do you mean, dear, ‘about the future’?  Have I done something I oughtn’t to?  Oh, I’m so dreadfully sorry!”

He resolutely put his hands behind him.  “Not a thing, God bless you, not a thing.  You’re as good as they make ’em.  But it’s just—­Good Lord, do you realize I’ve got things to do in the world?  I’ve got a business to attend to and, you might not believe it, but I’ve got a wife and kids that I’m awful fond of!” Then only during the murder he was committing was he able to feel nobly virtuous.  “I want us to be friends but, gosh, I can’t go on this way feeling I got to come up here every so often—­”

“Oh, darling, darling, and I’ve always told you, so carefully, that you were absolutely free.  I just wanted you to come around when you were tired and wanted to talk to me, or when you could enjoy our parties—­”

She was so reasonable, she was so gently right!  It took him an hour to make his escape, with nothing settled and everything horribly settled.  In a barren freedom of icy Northern wind he sighed, “Thank God that’s over!  Poor Tanis, poor darling decent Tanis!  But it is over.  Absolute!  I’m free!”