“You devil!” he replied without opening his teeth. “I could find it in my heart to admire your pluck and your cunning if it wasn’t too dangerous. You’re playing your part well, but your acting’s thrown away on me, my lass. Your lip trembles at the corners and your heart’s sinking in spite of your bold face. You know you’re found out, and will have to be punished; you hell-spawn, you!” His coolness and the note of concentrated hate and power in his voice chilled Nancy’s heart, and made her conscious that unless he was conciliated her husband was in a mood to torture her; but she was never less disposed to conciliate; on the contrary, she experienced a reckless desire to laugh and risk the consequences; and when she spoke her voice was charged with contemptuous and half-amused defiance. “God knows what you’re getting at! If you’ve anything to say, get it said like a man, and don’t think you can frighten me out o’ my wits by glowering at me as if I’d turned street-walker——” As she uttered the word she knew by the look that leaped to his eyes that she had given him his opportunity, and she stopped involuntarily. “That pulls you up, does it?” he asked. “As _if_ you’d turned street-walker, you say! That reminds me, I’ve a little visit of inspection to make to your wardrobe.” He turned as he spoke and walked over to the recess where her clothes were hanging and she raised herself on her elbow and watched him. “If you’re seeking the coat and skirt I wore this morning,” she said, “you might have seen that they’re hanging over the chair to dry on this side of the bed. I don’t put my things away wet.” “Then you admit you were out this morning?” He wheeled round as he asked the question, and his eyes blazed. “And why not?” she answered. “If you’d been awake you’d have heard me go. There’s no law against a woman going out if she can’t sleep, is there? What’s all the fuss about?” Not a line of the man’s expression changed. “Tell me truly why you went,” he demanded, striding up to the bed again, and looking into her face with a threatening scowl. “Tell me!” he repeated, and seizing her wrist in his strong palm he twisted it roughly. “I have told you already!” she replied, and set her teeth to hold back an exclamation of pain. “I’ll have the truth if I murder you!” he said, bending her arm until the pain brought unwilling tears to her eyes. Still she was silent, and her lips closed firmly, whereupon the tiger in the man conquered his self-control, and in a sudden gust of rage he seized her by the throat, and as he tightened his grip upon it, hissed: “Then listen and I’ll tell _you_! You spied on me, you she-devil! Whether you’d any other motive than curiosity I don’t know, but you’ve got to tell me everything or I’ll choke the life out of you. Now speak!” He widened his fingers, but still kept them on her throat, and she never raised her hands in what must have been a vain effort to free herself, but kept them tightly clasped on her breast.