“You know that you may say this—­to me, Warren,” she said with a leaden heart.

“Anybody may say it to anybody!” he answered irritably.  “Tying a man and a woman together doesn’t necessarily make them—­”

She interrupted with a quick, breathless, “Warren!”

“Well!” Again he shrugged his shoulders and again glanced at his watch.  “It seems to me that you shouldn’t have spoken of the matter if you were not prepared to discuss it!” he said.

Rachael felt the room whirling.  She could neither see nor feel anything now but the fury that possessed her.  Perhaps twice in her life before, never with him, had she so given way to anger.

“I shouldn’t have spoken of it, Warren!” she echoed.  “I should have borne it, and smiled, and said nothing!  Perhaps I should!  Perhaps some women would have done that—­”

“Rachael!” he interrupted quickly.  But she swept down his words in the wild tide of her own.

“Warren!” she said with deadly decision, “I’m not that sort of woman.  You’ve had your fun—­now it’s my turn!  Now it’s my turn!” Rachael repeated in a voiceless undertone as she rapidly paced the room.  “Now you can turn to the world, and see what the world thinks!  Let them know how often you and Magsie have been together, let them know that she came here to ask me to set you free, and then see what the general verdict is!  I’m not going to hush this up, to refrain from discussing it because you don’t care to, because it hurts your feelings!  It shall be discussed, and you shall be free!  You shall be free, and if you choose to put Magsie Clay here in my place, you may do so!”

“Rachael!” he said angrily.  And he caught her thin wrists in his hands.

“Don’t touch me!” she said, wrenching herself free.  “Don’t touch me, you cruel and wicked and heartless—!  Go to Magsie!  Tell her that I sent you to her!  Take your hands off me, Warren—­”

Standing back, discomfited, he attempted reason.

“Rachael!  Don’t talk so!  I don’t know what to make of you!  Why, I never saw you like this.  I never heard you—­”

The door of her room closed behind her.  She was gone.  A long silence fell in the troubled room where their voices had warred so lately.

Warren looked at his watch, looked at her door.  Then he went out the other door, and downstairs, and out of the house.  Rachael heard him go.  She was still breathing fast, still blind to everything but her own fury.  She would punish him, she would punish him.  He should have his verdict from the world he trusted so serenely; he should have his Magsie.

The clocks struck eleven:  first the slow clock in her sitting-room, then the quick silvery echo from downstairs.  Rachael glanced about nervously.  The Bank—­the boys’ lunches—­the trunks—­

She went downstairs.  In the little breakfast-room off the big dining-room the array of Warren’s breakfast waited.  Old Mary, with the boys, had just come in the side door.