"Don't you dare to touch Joe!" she cried, passionately. "Don't you lay a finger on him." Furious and red, he staggered round to look at her. "You wretched little wild-cat, what do you mean by that?" he broke out. "Don't you touch Joe!" she panted. "Don't you--" Her breath caught and there was a break in her voice as she faced him. She could not finish the repetition of that cry, "Don't you touch Joe!" But there was no break in the spirit, that passion of protection which had dealt the blow. Both boys looked at her, something aghast. She stood before them, trembling with rage and shivering with cold in the sudden wind which had come up. Her hair had fallen and blew across her streaming face in brown witch-wisps; one of the ill-darned stockings had come down and hung about her shoe in folds full of snow; the arm which had lost its sleeve was bare and wet; thin as the arm of a growing boy, it shook convulsively, and was red from shoulder to clinched fist. She was covered with snow. Mists of white drift blew across her, mercifully half veiling her. Eugene recovered himself. He swung round upon his heel, restored his hat to his head with precision, picked up his stick and touched his banjo-case with it. "Carry that into the house," he said, indifferently, to his step-brother. "Don't you do it!" said the girl, hotly, between her chattering teeth. Eugene turned towards her, wearing the sharp edge of a smile. Not removing his eyes from her face, he produced with deliberation a flat silver box from a pocket, took therefrom a cigarette, replaced the box, extracted a smaller silver box from another pocket, shook out of it a fusee, slowly lit the cigarette--this in a splendid silence, which he finally broke to say, languidly, but with particular distinctness: "Ariel Tabor, go home!" The girl's teeth stopped chattering, her lips remaining parted; she shook the hair out of her eyes and stared at him as if she did not understand, but Joe Louden, who had picked up the banjo-case obediently, burst into cheerful laughter. "That's it, 'Gene," he cried, gayly. "That's the way to talk to her!" "Stow it, you young cub," replied Eugene, not turning to him. "Do you think I'm trying to be amusing?" "I don't know what you mean by 'stow it,'" Joe began, "but if--" "I mean," interrupted the other, not relaxing his faintly smiling stare at the girl--"I mean that Ariel Tabor is to go home. Really, we can't have this kind of thing occurring upon our front lawn!" The flush upon her wet cheeks deepened and became dark; even her arm grew redder as she gazed back at him. In his eyes was patent his complete realization of the figure she cut, of this bare arm, of the strewn hair, of the fallen stocking, of the ragged shoulder of her blouse, of her patched short skirt, of the whole dishevelled little figure. He was the master of the house, and he was sending her home as ill-behaved children are sent home by neighbors.