His manner had grown calmer the moment he saw the red mark his strong hand had made on his wife’s wrist, and felt how utterly powerless in his grasp the little creature was. He placed her gently in the very chair she had tried to induce him to take, and then stood before her, towering above her, and without turning his eyes again toward the chair in which she sat, gravely and doggedly waiting. Annie felt cowed. For the first time in their lives, the husband stood in the position of the superior, and, as she sat guiltily there, understanding clearly for the first time that her husband had just right of complaint against her, and that, moreover, he was using that right with consideration and manliness, she gave a shy look upward, as if to see what change this inversion of their old attitudes toward each other had wrought in Harry’s handsome, careless, boyish face. It was too dark for her to see very clearly what little of his profile was shown in that position; she could only see that he stood very still, that, if he felt impatience, he was keeping it under strong control, and she began to feel dimly that in the argument which was coming he would meet her for the first time upon equal terms. As she still sat, with her head raised, looking up anxiously at him, he turned and his eyes met hers. “Are you ready now?” he asked, simply. “Ready for what?” said she, impatiently. “Ready to answer some questions I have to ask you.” “Of course I can answer any questions you please; but I don’t see the necessity of all this fuss about the matter. Whatever you have to ask I could have answered a long time ago,” said Annie, indifferently. “But if you like to play inquisitor and give yourself the airs of a judge, why--it’s nothing to me!” “Can we have the gas lighted?” asked Harry. “I can’t see your face.” She rose and lighted it herself, rather reluctantly. She would have preferred that the interrogation she would have to submit to should have been made in the twilight. However, he was not in a mood to be argued with, so she sat down again in the gas-light, with some work in her hand. “You don’t want that for a few minutes,” said her husband, taking from her hands the stage-cap she was making. “I want you to look at me.” So she submitted again, with a shrug of the shoulders and a little, contemptuous laugh, which was rather forced, and raised her restless, dark eyes to his steady, blue ones, with an affectation of indifference which did not even irritate him. “Won’t you sit down? I can’t look at you without cricking my neck while you stand towering above me like that!” said she. “Thank you. I don’t think I could sit down here quietly with you until I was a little more sure than I am of the footing on which I am here,” returned Harry; and, for the first time, she noticed a nervous movement of his left hand.