“_Well!_” she gasped, and now the throaty contralto was merged into a guttural snarl, ridiculously akin to an angry cat’s. “_Well!_ Of all the cheap tight-wads I ever struck! Think you can backtrack _me_, do you? Well, you _lose_! I’m married to him all right, and _I’m_ not giving him up in a hurry. You try to butt in, and you’ll find yourself in a hundred thousand alienation suit! Oh, I know _my_ rights, and no up-country Rube’s going to skin me out of ’em. You old bunch of grouchiness! And to think they let you boss things in this jay town of yours! Why, in New York you’d never get nearer Broadway than Tenth Avenue, and you couldn’t even boss a red light precinct. My Gawd! I’ll have to keep it dark about my coming to a hole like this or my friends’ll think I’ve been playing a ten-twenty-thirt’ circuit. No civilized person ever comes here, and now I know why. They’re afraid they’ll be mistook for a friend of yours, most likely. You redheaded old geezer, you don’t even know a lady when you see one. Keep your lantern-jawed, pie-faced mutt of a son. I’m going back to where there’s at least _one_ perfect gentleman who knows how to behave when a lady honors him by——” “Enid!” cried Gerald, who had sat in dumb, nerveless confusion during the recent interchange of courtesies, “you don’t mean—? You mustn’t go back to him! You _mustn’t_! Has he met you again since I left? Tell me! I said I’d kill him if he ever spoke to you again, and, by God, I will! He shan’t——” A timid, falsetto screech, like that of a very young leveret that is inadvertently trodden beneath a farmer’s foot in long grass, broke in on the boy’s ravings. Mrs. Caleb Conover collapsed on the floor in a dead faint. Anice ran to the unconscious woman’s aid. Even Gerald, checked midway in his mad appeal, stopped and stared down in stupid wonder at his mother’s little huddled figure. Caleb seized the moment to cross the room quickly toward the furious chorus girl. He caught her by the shoulder, and in his pale eyes blazed a flare that few men and no woman had ever seen there. The color, behind the artistic paint on the visitor’s face, went white at the look. She, who was accustomed to brave the rages of drunken rounders, shrank speechless, cowering before those light eyes. One arm she raised awkwardly as if to avert a blow. Yet Caleb’s touch on her shoulder was gentle; and, when he spoke, his voice was strangely dead and unemotional. So low was it that his meaning rather than his exact words reached the actress. “This is _my_ city,” said he. “What I say goes. There is a train to New York in thirty minutes. If you are in Granite one minute after it leaves, my police shall arrest you. My witnesses shall make the charge something that even _you_ will hardly care to stand for. My judge shall send you to prison for a year. And every paper in New York shall print the whole story as I choose to tell it. Now go!”