He stopped just short of her, the upper half of his body thrust backward from restraining his impulse to lunge, his face distorted and quivering down at her. "Be careful," he said. "By God! be careful when I get my blood up. The woman don't live that can touch my respectability. If you go, you go without a divorce. You're trying to harm me--ruin my life--that's what you are. Ruin my life." And suddenly, before the impulse to strike had traveled down his tightening arm, collapsed weakly, his entire body retched by the dry sobs that men weep. He could so readily arouse her aversion, that even now, with a quick pity for him stinging her eyeballs, she could regard him dispassionately, a certain disgust for him uppermost. He turned toward her finally with the look of a stricken St. Bernard dog, his lower lids salt-bitten and showing half moons of red flesh. "What is it, Lilly? What have I failed in? For God's sake tell me and I'll make it right." "That's the terrible part, Albert. You haven't failed. You're _you_. It's something neither of us can control any more than we can control the color of our eyes. It's as if I were a--a problem in chemistry that had reacted differently than was expected and blew off the top of things." "Bah! the trouble with you women to-day is that you've got an itch that you don't know how to scratch. Well, it's high time for you to learn a way to scratch yours by settling down like a respectable married woman has to." His voice rising and his wrongs red before him: "I wish to God I'd never laid eyes on you. I thought you were more sensible than most and I find you a crazy woman." "Then, Albert, you don't want a crazy woman for your wife!" "Ah no, you don't! No, you don't! I've worked like a dog to get where I am. I'm a respected member of this community and I intend to stay one. No woman gets a divorce out of me unless over my dead body. I'm a leader of a Bible class and an officer in my lodge. I wore a plume and gold braid at the funeral of the mayor of this town. I'm first-assistant buyer and I propose to become general manager. I'm a respectable citizen trying to settle down to a respectable home, and, by God! no woman tomfoolery is going to bamboozle me out of it." She sat with her eyes closed, tears seeping through them, and her fist beating softly into her palm. "Oh, Albert--Albert--how can I make you understand? My brain is bursting--" "Lilly," he interrupted, explosively reaching out and closing over her wrist, and sudden perception lifting his voice, "I know! You--you're not well! You're ailing. Women aren't--aren't always quite themselves--at times. You--Lilly--could it be--" "No! No! No! I'll go mad if you, too, begin to insinuate--that! I'm myself, I tell you. Never more so in my life." He regarded her through frank and even tender tears, his voice humoring her.