dinner passed like a funeral, the judge and Mr. Morse confining their talk to each other, and the rest of the conversation being extremely desultory. Then afterward, when Ruth and Martin were alone, there was a scene.

“You are unbearable,” she wept.

But his anger still smouldered, and he kept muttering, “The beasts! The beasts!”

When she averred he had insulted the judge, he retorted:-

“By telling the truth about him?”

“I don’t care whether it was true or not,” she insisted. “There are certain bounds of decency, and you had no license to insult anybody.”

“Then where did Judge Blount get the license to assault truth?” Martin demanded. “Surely to assault truth is a more serious misdemeanor than to insult a pygmy personality such as the judge’s. He did worse than that. He blackened the name of a great, noble man who is dead. Oh, the beasts! The beasts!”

His complex anger flamed afresh, and Ruth was in terror of him. Never had she seen him so angry, and it was all mystified and unreasonable to her comprehension. And yet, through her very terror ran the fibres of fascination that had drawn and that still drew her to him — that had compelled her to lean towards him, and, in that mad, culminating moment, lay her hands upon his neck. She was hurt and outraged by what had taken place, and yet she lay in his arms and quivered while he went on muttering, “The beasts! The beasts!” And she still lay there when he said: “I’ll not bother your table again, dear. They do not like me, and it is wrong of me to thrust my objectionable presence upon them. Besides, they are just as objectionable to me. Faugh! They are sickening. And to think of it, I dreamed in my innocence that the persons who sat in the high places, who lived in fine houses and had educations and bank accounts, were worth while!