From time to
time he opened his lips to protest or deny, but no words came, and
in his silence a fury of scorn for the poor, faithful, scolding
thing, so just, so wildly unjust, gathered head in him.
"Be still!" he ground between his teeth. "Be still, you--" He
stopped for the word, and that saved him from the outrage he had
meant to pay her back with. He rose from the table. "You can tell
Statira what you've said to me. I'm going home."
He rushed away; the anger was like strong drink in his brain; he was
like one drunk all the way back to the city in the car.
He could not go to Mr. Corey's at once; he felt as if physically
besmeared with shame; he could not go to his boarding-house; it
would have been as if he had shown himself there in a coat of tar
and feathers. Those insolent, true, degrading words hissed in his
ears, and stung him incessantly. They accused, they condemned with
pitiless iteration; and yet there were instants when he knew himself
guiltless of all the wrong of which in another sense he knew himself
guilty. In his room he renewed the battle within himself that he had
fought so long in his wanderings up and down the street, and he
conquered himself at last into the theory that Statira had
authorised or permitted 'Manda Grier to talk to him in that way.
This simplified the whole affair; it offered him the release which
he now knew he had longed for.
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