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"I? A--a rupture?"

"Yes," she said hotly; "do you?"

"Do you, Sylvia?"

"No; I'm too cowardly, too selfish, too treacherous tohis furtive eyes

"Very well You are rown unsteady; an unreasoning rush of anger had set her whole body a-thrill, and the white heat of it was driving her to provoke hinoain did not require two of the same mind tounder the angry waves of self-conte ures in our tin-trumpet world? Because, united, we can do his teeth in that twitching snicker that contracted theat her

She turned scarlet to her hair; the deliberate grossness stunned her Confused, she stood confronting him, dumb under a retort the coarseness of which she had never dreamed him capable

"I mean what I say," he repeated cals: his fortune, and the heirs to it If you didn't know that you have learned it now You hurt me deliberately I told you a plain truth very bluntly It is for you to consider the situation"

But she could not speak; anger, huue-tied The instinctive revolt at the vague horror--thecould force words from her to repudiate, to deny what he had dared to utter

Except as the effrontery of brutality, except as a for at her for his rotesque impossibility Only the intentional coarseness of it was to be endured--if she chose to endure it; for the rest was e to her

Lent was half over before she saw hiain Neither he nor she had taken any steps to coiven by the Siowa Hunt, Quarrier, as M F H, took up the thread of their suspended intercourse as h it had never quivered to the breaking point He led the cotillon with agreeable precision and ih she wasted no favours on him, she endured his, which was sufficient evidence that matters were still in statu quo