Page:Son of the wind.djvu/379

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THE SUPERB MOMENT

her with nervous ringers, kept looking at him in a way that made him uncomfortable. "I am sorry you don't like it," he said.

She turned from him abruptly upon her husband. "Are you a man?" she demanded. "You could stand here and let him come in?"

"How could I help it?" Rader inquired querulously. "He was in here before I knew." He sat down disconsolately in one of the army of chairs.

"You wouldn't have kept him out anyway," she retorted. "You care more about what you want to do than about your own blood."

The subject of this discussion stood hearing it as if it were of some third indefinite person they were speaking. He was astonished that any one could feel so violently about anything but his one interest. "Mrs. Rader," he urged, "I know very well that from the first you haven't liked me, but I am not such a bad sort as you seem to think."

The woman's breast heaved as if her narrow frame were too small to contain her emotion.

"You know what Blanche thinks about it, I suppose?" he added.

"Yes." The words came like a lash.

"Where is she?"

"You won't see her!"

"My dear Mrs. Rader," Carron protested, and

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