I know now where Dicky gets the sneering tone which sets me wild when he directs it against me.  His mother’s inflection is exactly like her son’s.  The contemptuous glance with which she swept me nerved me to speak to her in a manner which I had never dreamed I would use toward Dicky’s mother.

“Mrs. Graham,” I said, raising my head and returning her stare with a look equally cold and steady, “my husband”—­I emphasized the words slightly—­“and I are discussing something which cannot possibly concern you.  You were not the subject of conversation, and your name was brought in by accident.  I hope you will be good enough to allow us to finish our discussion.”

My mother-in-law evidently knows when to stop.  She eyed me steadily for a moment.

“Dicky,” she said at last, and her manner of sweeping me out of the universe was superb, “in five minutes I wish to speak to you in my room.”

“All right, mother.”  Dicky’s tone was unsteady, and as his mother’s door closed behind her I prepared myself to face his increased anger.

“How dared you to speak to my mother in that fashion?” he demanded hoarsely.

When I am most angry, a diabolically aggravating spirit seems to possess me.  I could feel it enmeshing me.

“Please don’t be melodramatic, Dicky,” I said mockingly, “and if you have quite finished, I will go.”

“No, you won’t, at least not until I have told you something,” he snarled.

He sprang to my side, and seized my shoulder in a cruel grip that made me wince.

“We’ll just have this out once for all,” he said.  “If you go out of this door you go out for good.  I don’t care for the role of complacent husband.”

The insult left me deadly cold.  I knew, of course, that Dicky was so blinded by rage and jealousy that he had no idea of what he was saying.  But ungovernable as I knew his temper to be, he had passed the limits of my forebearance.

“I will answer that speech in 10 minutes,” I said and walked into my room again.

For I had come to a decision as startling as it was sudden.  I hastily threw some most necessary things into a bag.  Then I put a ten-dollar bill of the housekeeping money into my purse, resolving to send it back to Dicky as soon as I could get access to my own tiny bank account, the remnant of my teaching savings.  Into a parcel I placed the rest of the housekeeping money, my wedding and engagement rings and the lavalliere which Dicky had given me as a wedding present.  I put them in the back of the top drawer of my dressing table, for I knew if I handed them to Dicky in his present frame of mind he would destroy them.  Then I walked steadily into the living room, bag in hand.

Dicky was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the murmur of voices in his mother’s room.  I went to the door and knocked.  Dicky threw it open, his face still showing the marks of his anger.

“You will find the housekeeping money in the top drawer of my dressing table,” I said calmly.  “I will send you my address as soon as I have one, and you will please have Katie pack up my things and send them to me.”