He shrugged. "Answer for yourself, Pancha. Believe me, I'm not at all past conforming to the usages of civilized people." He had moved back to the fireplace, and leaning against the mantel waited for her to reply. As she did not do so, he said, "Let me repeat, I don't like your coming here." Her eyes, level and fixed, were disconcerting. To avoid them he turned to the mantel and took up a cigarette and matches lying there. "Then why don't you come to see me?" she said. "Teh--Teh!" He put the cigarette between his teeth and struck the match on the shelf. "Haven't I told you I'm busy?" "Yes, you've _told_ me that." "Well?" "You've told me lies." "Thank you." He was occupied lighting the cigarette. "Why, when I telephoned an hour ago and gave my name, did you say you were out?" He affected an air of forbearance. "Because I happened to be out." "Boye, that's another lie." He threw the match into the fireplace and turned his eyes on her full of a steely dislike. "Look here, Pancha. You've bothered me a lot lately, calling me up, nagging at me about things I couldn't help. I'm not the kind of man that likes that; I'm not the kind that stands it. I've been a friend of yours and hope to stay so, but--" She cut him off, her voice trembling with passion. "_Friend_--you a friend! _You_ who do nothing but put me off with lies--who are trying to shake me, throw me away like an old shoe!" Her restraint was gone. With her shoulders raised and her chin thrust forward, the thing she had been, and still was--child of the lower depths, bred in its ways--was revealed to him. It made him afraid of her, seeing possibilities he had not grasped before. What he had thought to be harmless and powerless might become one more menacing element in the dangers that surrounded him. His natural caution put a check upon his anger. He tried to speak with a soothing good humor. "Now, my dear girl, don't talk like that. It's not true in the first place, it's stupid in the second, and in the third it only tends to make bad feeling between us that there's no cause for." "Oh, yes, there's cause, lots of cause." He found her steady eyes more discomfiting than ever, and looking at his cigarette said: "Panchita, you're not yourself. You're overworked and overwrought, imagining things that don't exist. Instead of standing there slanging me you ought to go home and take a rest." She paid no attention to this suggestion, but suddenly, moving nearer, said: "What did you do it for, Boye?" "Do what?" "Make love to me--make me think you loved me. Why did you come? Why did you say what you did? Why did you kiss me? Why, when you saw the way I felt, did you keep on? What good was it to you?" To gain a moment's time, and to hide his face from her haggard gaze, he turned and put the cigarette carefully on the stand of the matchsafe. He found it difficult to keep the soothing note in his voice.