you, and making a mock of the things they believe in, and which you for
your life wouldn't dare let them know you didn't believe in. You talked
to us slightingly about your wife. What were you thinking of, not
to comprehend that that would disgust us? You showed me once--do you
remember?--a life of George Sand that you had just bought,--bought
because you had just discovered that she had an unclean side to her
life. You chuckled as you spoke to me about it, and you were for all the
world like a little nasty boy, giggling over something dirty that older
people had learned not to notice. These are merely random incidents.
They are just samples, picked hap-hazard, of the things in you which
have been opening our eyes, little by little, to our mistake. I
can understand that all the while you really fancied that you were
expanding, growing, in all directions. What you took to be improvement
was degeneration. When you thought that you were impressing us most by
your smart sayings and doings, you were reminding us most of the fable
about the donkey trying to play lap-dog. And it wasn't even an honest,
straightforward donkey at that!"

She uttered these last words sorrowfully, her hands clasped in her lap,
and her eyes sinking to the floor. A silence ensued. Then Theron reached
a groping hand out for his hat, and, rising, walked with a lifeless,
automatic step to the door.

He had it half open, when the impossibility of leaving in this way
towered suddenly in his path and overwhelmed him. He slammed the door
to, and turned as if he had been whirled round by some mighty wind.
He came toward her, with something almost menacing in the vigor of his
movements, and in the wild look upon his white, set face. Halting
before her, he covered the tailor-clad figure, the coiled red hair, the
upturned face with its simulated calm, the big brown eyes, the rings