He saw that she was nerving herself not to flinch at this confrontation with the practical.  He saw too that her courage and her self-command would have deceived any one but him.  The very pluck with which she nodded her comprehension of his idea, and her sympathy with it, enraged him to a point at which, so it seemed to him, he could have struck her.  Had she cried off from her bargain he could have borne it far more easily.  That would at least have given him a sense of superiority, and helped him to be magnanimous; while this readiness to pay put him in the wrong, and drove him to exact the uttermost farthing of his rights.  On a weak woman he might have taken pity; but this strong creature, who refused to sue to him by so much as the quiver of an eyelid, and rejected his concessions before he had time to put them forth, exasperated every nerve that had been wont to tingle to his sense of power.  Since she had asked no quarter, why should he give it?—­above all, when to give quarter was against his principles.

“And perhaps,” he pursued, in an even voice, showing no sign of the tempest within, “that would be as good a time as any for you to look over the entire house.  If there are any changes you would like to have made——­”

“I don’t think there will be.”

“All the same, I should like you to see.  A man’s house, however well arranged, isn’t always right for a woman’s occupancy; and so——­”

“Very well; I’ll come.”

“When?”

“I’ll come to-morrow.”

“About four?”

“Yes; about four.  That would suit me perfectly.”

She spoke frankly, and even smiled faintly, with just such a shadow of a blush as the situation called for.  The Wise Man within him begged him once more to be content.  If, the Wise Man argued, this well-poised serenity was not love, it was something so like it that the distinction would require a splitting of hairs.  Conquest strove to listen and obey; but even as he did so he was aware again of that rage of impotence which finds its easiest outlet in violence.  As he rose to take his leave, with all the outward signs of friendly ceremoniousness, he had time to be appalled at the perception that he, the middle-aged, spick-and-span New-Yorker, should so fully understand how it is that a certain type of frenzied brute can kill the woman whom he passionately loves, but who is hopelessly out of reach.

XXIV

Except when his business instincts were on the alert, Ford’s slowness of perception was perhaps most apparent in his judgment of character and his analysis of other people’s motives.  Taking men and women as he found them, he had little tendency to speculate as to the impulses within their lives, any more than as to the furnishings behind their house-fronts.  A human being was all exterior to him, something like a street.  Even in matters that touched him closely, the act alone was his concern; and he dealt with its consequences, without, as a rule, much inquisitive probing of its cause.