For Helen had caught a glimpse of this modern young caveman’s intellectual brutality and bad temper for the first time in her life, and it was a vital revelation to the girl. He had whacked her, verbally, violently, until, in her infuriated astonishment, it was made plain to her that there was much more to him than she had ever reckoned with. He had hurt her pride, dreadfully, he had banged her character about without mercy—handled her with a disdainful vigour and virility that opened her complacent brown eyes to a new vision and a new interpretation of man. "Phil," she murmured, "do you realize that you were positively common in what you said to me up on that hill?" "I know I was." "You told me——" a slight shudder passed over her and he felt it in the shoulder that touched his—"you told me that you—you were ’fed up!’" "I _was_!" "And you, a poet—a man with an almost divine facility of language——" "Sure," he said, grinning; "I’m artist enough to know the value of vulgarity. It gives a wonderful punch, Helen—once in a lifetime." "Oh, Phil! You horrify me. I didn’t understand that you are just a plain, every-day, bad-tempered, brutal, selfish and violent man——" "Dearest, I am! And thank God you are woman enough to stand for it.... Are you?" They had reached the house and were standing on the porch now, her hands restlessly twisting in his sun-browned grasp, her pretty head averted, refusing to meet his eyes. "Are you?" he repeated sternly. "Am I, what? Oh, Phil, you hurt me—my rings hurt——" "Then don’t twist your fingers. And answer me; are you woman enough to stand for the sort of everyday human man that you say I am? _Are_ you?" She said something under her breath. "Did you say yes?" he demanded. She nodded, not looking at him. Before he could kiss her she slid out of his grasp with a low exclamation of warning, and, looking around, he beheld the Belters, arm-in-arm, approaching across the lawn. "Fido!" he muttered, "damn!" And he followed his divinity into the house. *CHAPTER XXXII* Helen kept her own council as long as the Belters remained at Runner’s Rest, but as soon as they had departed she went to Stephanie’s room and made a clean breast of it. "What on earth do you suppose has happened to me, Steve?" she demanded, standing by the day-bed on which Stephanie was stretched out reading a novel and absorbing chocolates. "What?" asked Stephanie, lifting her grey eyes. "Well, there’s the very deuce to pay with Phil Grayson. He isn’t a bit nice to me. He isn’t like himself. He bullies me." "Why do you let him?" "I—don’t know. I resent it. He’s entirely too bossy. He’s taken possession of me and he behaves abominably." "Sentimentally?" "Yes." "But you don’t have to endure it!" exclaimed Stephanie, astonished. "If I don’t submit," said Helen, "I shall lose him. He’ll go away. He says he will." "Well, do you care what Phil Grayson does?" demanded Stephanie, amazed.