“I say, kid, keep your boss quiet if you can,” whispered Mrs. King.  “My young chaps down below can’t get their proper sleep for that row, and they’ve got a hard day’s work before them if he hasn’t.”

“Mrs. King, whatever am I to do with him?” she cried frantically.  “I don’t believe he knows it’s me.  And he’s so horribly dirty.”

“Oh, go an’ sit on his knee a bit, kid, and make up to him.  That’s the best way to make them go quiet.  He’s at the vulgar stage to-night, your boss is.  But do keep him quiet.  Not that I’m not sorry for you, kid,” she added, as she turned away.  “They’re beasts, men are.  Mine’s asleep as it happens.”

He was still raving, saying disgusting things that, unfortunately, were in English this time.  Looking at him in the candlelight she felt terrified of him and utterly unable to treat him as a sick man and not a wicked one.  As she stood there stiff, unable through sheer disgust to get any nearer to him, he clutched at her nightgown and drew her nearer.  She felt frantic; her nails cut into her hands as she gripped them together as if for the comforting feel of a hand in hers.

“Why should I have this disgust happen to me?  It’s too dirty to ask women to get men to sleep like this.”

Then, amidst all the searing things he was saying, came the memories of those cries in the night at the farm and she wondered breathlessly if this sort of thing could have happened to her mother.  And, at that moment she knew that it had not.  Her father might, quite possibly, have almost killed her mother by his violent rages.  But he could never have been merely disgusting.  She looked at him again and felt murderous; a passion to put him out of life, to stamp upon him and finish him flooded up and burst and died all in an instant.  She realized in that quiet instant that this passionate disgust was utterly selfish; if he had been loathsome with any other disease than this she would have nursed and soothed him tenderly; if he had been clean and charming, as on the night of the aurora.

“Oh, what a hypocrite you are, Marcella Lashcairn!” she said.  “With all your high-falutin’ ideas of balance and coolness!  You’ve been luxuriating in the thought of martyrdom all the time you’ve been fighting the enchantment of this wretched love-making!  You’ve not been fighting it a bit, really!  It’s only now, when it’s disgusting and beastly and—­not a bit enchanting, that you’re fighting it!  What a liar you’ve been!”

“I wan’ my wife,” he muttered, quietened a little by Mrs. King’s voice.  “’Sall very well, ole girl.”

“Be quiet, Louis, or I’ll shake your head off!” she said, quietly.  He stared at her, and cowered down in the bed.  She watched him for a moment.  Then she spoke softly.

“Now you’re going to sleep—­you’re going to put your head down on Marcella’s shoulder and go to sleep.  You’re quite safe with Marcella.”

He shivered a little, and then lay still.  She pinched out the candle with fingers that did not feel the flame.