“You shall apologise for that!  You shall apologise before you leave this room!” she exploded.  Her chin was aloft and her mouth remained open.  “I say you shall apologise for that monstrous untruth!”

He approached her, uttering not a word.  She was quite ready to kill him.  She had no fear of anything whatever.  Not once since his arrival had she given one thought to the imminent advent of Mr. Gilman.

She said to herself, watching Musa intently: 

“Yes, he shall apologise.  It is shameful, what he says.  It’s worse than horrid.  I am as strong as he is.”

Musa dropped his hat, stick and gloves.  The hat, being English and hard, bounced on the carpet.  Then he put his trembling arms around her waist, and his trembling lips came nearer and nearer to hers.

She thought, very puzzled: 

“What is happening?  This is all wrong.  I am furious with him!  I will never speak to him again!  What is he doing?  This is all wrong.  I must stop it.  I’m saying nothing to him about my career, and my independence, and how horrid it is to be the wife of a genius, and all that....  I must stop it.”

But she had no volition to stop it.

She thought: 

“Am I fainting?”

* * * * *

It was upon this scene that Mr. Gilman intruded.  Mr. Gilman looked from one to the other.  Perhaps the thought in his mind was that if they added their ages together they could not equal his age.  Perhaps it was not.  He continued to look from one to the other, and this needed some ocular effort, for they were as far apart as two persons in such a situation usually get when they are surprised.  Then he caught sight of the hat, stick and gloves on the floor.

“I’ve been expecting you for a long time,” said Audrey, with that miraculous bland tranquillity of which young girls alone have the secret when the conventions are imperilled.  “I was just going to order tea.”

Mr. Gilman hesitated and then replied: 

“How kind of you!  But please don’t order tea for me.  The—­er—­fact is, I have been unexpectedly called away, and I only called to explain that—­er—­I could not call.”  After all, he was a man of some experience.

She let him go.  His demeanour to Musa, like Musa’s to him, was a marvel of high courtesy.

“Musa,” said Audrey, with an intimidated, defiant, proud smile, when the door had shut on Mr. Gilman, “I am still frightfully angry with you.  If we stay here I shall suffocate.  Let us go out for a walk.  Besides, other people might call.”

Simultaneously there was another ring.  It was a cable.  She read: 

“Sold Zacatecas at an average of six and a quarter dollars three weeks ago.  Wrote you at length to Wimereux.  Writing again as to new investments.

“FOULGER.”

“This comes of having no fixed address,” she said, throwing the blue cablegram carelessly down in front of Musa.  “I’m not quite ruined, after all.  But I might have known—­with Mr. Foulger.”  Then she explained.