He got up quickly, ashamed for a moment of having lied to her, but more ashamed of his stupidity in not being more careful; but when she came in he was so uplifted and vivified by the drug that he had been off his guard. But his shame was infinitesimal compared to his anger with her. She had spoiled, smashed up all his happiness by her interference. Instead of that wonderful sense of well-being and complete physical and mental contentment, he felt now only furiously angry with her. What right had she to break in upon him like this, making him lie to her, which he hated, and making his lie instantly detected? "And where is the use of your interfering like this?" he cried. "You have spoiled it all now: you have robbed me of it, and it was mine! It would serve you right if I took another dose now, straight away, and did not come down. You know nothing at all about it. I was an absolute martyr to that neuralgia up in Scotland, and I began--yes, I did begin--to get into the habit of taking this. But I am breaking myself of it; you didn't know that. Till this evening I had not taken any for two days, and after that I was not going to take any more for three days, and after that not for four. You seem to think.... I don't know what you think." She felt at that moment more tenderly towards him than she had felt for years. His weakness--his voluble, incoherent weakness--his childish excuses, touched her. There was something almost woundingly pathetic, too, in his graduated resolves, as if a habit could be cured that way. His anger roused no resentment in her, and she spoke appealingly, full of pity. "Oh, Thurso, you don't know what a dangerous thing you are doing," she said--"indeed, you don't. The very fact that you do it makes you unable to see what you do. Be a man, and don't think about two days, or three days, or four days, but stop it now at once. The longer it goes on, the more difficult it will be to break it. Give me the bottle, or whatever it is, like a good fellow, and let me throw it away. You will be glad you have done so every day of your life afterwards. Please, I entreat you." His anger died out as she spoke, for the effect of the drug was still on him, enhancing his enjoyment of the light and the country fragrance, and enhancing the glory of her superb beauty as she pleaded with him. She had not resented the angry things he had said to her: that was fine of her, and fine she always was, and she was not contemptuous of the lie he had babbled and stuttered over. She seemed not to remember it, and that was generous. Above all, his craving for the drug was satisfied for the moment, and, so he added somewhere very secretly, he could always get some more. Nor was his will yet entirely enslaved, and all his best self told him that she was right beyond any question or possibility of argument.