Next day at Taine's, when they met for lunch, Samuel dropped all pretense and made frank love to her. He had no plans, no definite intentions, except to kiss her lips again, to hold her in his arms and feel that she was very little and pathetic and lovable. . . . He took her home, and this time they kissed until both their hearts beat high--words and phrases formed on his lips. And then suddenly there were steps on the porch--a hand tried the outside door. Marjorie turned dead-white. "Wait!" she whispered to Samuel, in a frightened voice, but in angry impatience at the interruption he walked to the front door and threw it open. Every one has seen such scenes on the stage--seen them so often that when they actually happen people behave very much like actors. Samuel felt that he was playing a part and the lines came quite naturally: he announced that all had a right to lead their own lives and looked at Marjorie's husband menacingly, as if daring him to doubt it. Marjorie's husband spoke of the sanctity of the home, forgetting that it hadn't seemed very holy to him lately; Samuel continued along the line of "the right to happiness"; Marjorie's husband mentioned firearms and the divorce court. Then suddenly he stopped and scrutinized both of them--Marjorie in pitiful collapse on the sofa, Samuel haranguing the furniture in a consciously heroic pose. "Go up-stairs, Marjorie," he said, in a different tone. "Stay where you are!" Samuel countered quickly. Marjorie rose, wavered, and sat down, rose again and moved hesitatingly toward the stairs. "Come outside," said her husband to Samuel. "I want to talk to you." Samuel glanced at Marjorie, tried to get some message from her eyes; then he shut his lips and went out. There was a bright moon and when Marjorie's husband came down the steps Samuel could see plainly that he was suffering--but he felt no pity for him. They stood and looked at each other, a few feet apart, and the husband cleared his throat as though it were a bit husky. "That's my wife," he said quietly, and then a wild anger surged up inside him. "Damn you!" he cried--and hit Samuel in the face with all his strength. In that second, as Samuel slumped to the ground, it flashed to him that he had been hit like that twice before, and simultaneously the incident altered like a dream--he felt suddenly awake. Mechanically he sprang to his feet and squared off. The other man was waiting, fists up, a yard away, but Samuel knew that though physically he had him by several inches and many pounds, he wouldn't hit him. The situation had miraculously and entirely changed--a moment before Samuel had seemed to himself heroic; now he seemed the cad, the outsider, and Marjorie's husband, silhouetted against the lights of the little house, the eternal heroic figure, the defender of his home. There was a pause and then Samuel turned quickly away and went down the path for the last time. IV