She gave him a clout over the head that sobered him. Logan pounced on her like a tiger. "You devil!" he said. "You she-devil! Don't you see the poor boy's ill?" "What's that to me?" she screamed, with her head wobbling backwards and forwards horribly as he shook her. "It's n-nothing t-to m-me!" She caught Logan by the wrist and sent him spinning, for she was nearly as strong as he. "Go to Brighton!" she shouted. "I don't care. I'll be glad to be rid of you both. You won't find me here when you come back, that's all, you and your little hurdy-gurdy boy! You only need a monkey and an organ to make you complete. Why don't you try it? You'd do better at that than out of pictures." Logan could not contain himself. His rage burst out of him in a howl like that of a wind in a chimney, a dismal, empty moan. He stood up, and the veins on his neck swelled and his mouth opened and shut foolishly, for he could find nothing to say. "You slut, you squeezed-out dishclout, you sponge!" he roared at last. "Clear out, you drab! Clear out into the streets, you trull! Draggle your skirts in the mud, you filth, you octopus! Sell the carcase that you don't know how to give, you marble!" She flung up her hands and sank on to her knees, and let down her hair and moaned:-- "O God! O God! O God!" Logan's fury snapped. "For God's sake! For God's sake!" he said. "What has come over us? Oh, God help us! What are we doing? What are we coming to? Nell! Nell! I didn't know what I was saying!" He went down on his knees beside her, and Mendel, who had been numbed but inwardly elated by the storm, could not endure the craven surrender, the cowardly reconciliation, and he left them. Out in the street he stood tottering on the curb, and spat into the gutter, with extreme precision, between the bars of a grating. * * * * * At Brighton, whither they went next day, Logan explained himself. "It is extraordinary how near love is to hate, and how rotten love becomes if hate is suppressed--stale and tasteless and vapid." "Are you talking about yourself and Oliver?" asked Mendel. "Yes." "Then please don't. I don't mind what happens between you and her so long as it doesn't happen in front of me." "I'm sorry," said Logan; "but it can't always be prevented. I don't see the use of pretence." "Neither do I. But some things are your own affair, and it is indecent to let other people see them." "Oh, a row's a row!" said Logan cheerfully. "And one is all the better for it." "But if a woman treated me like that I should never speak to her again." "Love's too deep for that. You can't stand on your dignity in love." "I should make her understand once and for all that I would not have it." "Then she would deceive you. If you played the tyrant over a girl like Oliver she would deceive you."