“It is not that,” he said kindly, but still feeling in his unsophisticated brain that it was.  “I don’t hold you cheap, my dear.  I want to disabuse your mind of that idea, that I am throwing anything in your teeth.  Good God, I should think not!—­it would come ill from me.  I have no conventional views about these things—­none.  But look here now:  if you were my wife, I should never see you with another fellow without thinking—­well, you know what I should think—­and feeling myself like poor old Ewing—­Oh, I am a brute!” It was revealed to him all at once.  “Do—­do forgive me!”

“Pray don’t apologise!” she cried, in a high, shaking voice.  “It is best, as you say, to speak plainly—­not to mince matters—­especially as there is no one to call you to account for what you say.”

“And it would be worse for you, ever so much,” he continued earnestly.  “Having got into the way of—­of this sort of thing—­I’m afraid I might be tempted again—­that I couldn’t honestly promise—­in short, the fact of the matter is that we are neither of us domesticated, so to speak—­”

“There—­that will do” she broke in, coldly furious, but with a volcano in her breast that threatened eruption and devastation shortly.  “Will you let me go, Captain Carey?  Or must I call my servants to my assistance?  I have only servants now.”

“Yes, yes”—­and he released one hand—­“I will, if you’ll say you forgive me, Francie.  I’ve made an awful mess of it, I know—­”

They rose together, and the other hand was freed.  It was the right hand, and she returned it to him immediately.

“Good-bye!” she said, between clenched teeth.

He held her tightly once more.

“May I come and see you again?  May I write?  I can say it better in writing.”

“You have said all that needs to be said.  There is no necessity to write.  If you write to me, I shall return the letter unopened.”

“But why?  It is surely absurd for us to put on airs of dignity with one another.  Francie, you don’t mean us to part like this?”

She stepped quickly across the hearthrug and, with a passionate gesture, pressed the button of the bell—­evidently to summon Willis to show him out.  So he took up his hat, offended in his turn, and for the first time feeling fairly easy in his mind as to the way he was treating her.  But the tragedy of the moment was turned to vulgar comedy by her alarm at the fact that she had struck the bell before relighting the pink lamps.

“Oh, where are the matches?” she whispered excitedly.  “I can’t find them.”

“Here—­here!” he cried, fumbling for his own pocket box.

And their flurried hands got mixed as she turned the taps while he applied the light to the burners.

The instant after they had restored the room to its normal condition, the butler appeared.  Mrs Ewing turned to him with the amazing self-possession of a woman accustomed to extricate herself at a moment’s notice from an awkward fix.