they wish to be mildly disagreeable. He felt a Gallic insistence to retaliate even at the expense of chivalry. At the worst, he thought, he would only be living up to the popular conception of the men in his profession. And there was some link of peculiar intimacy between this woman and Endicott. …
“If we cannot get hold of Mr. Hollander,” he said, “would you consider it advisable for the post to be taken by yourself?”
He repented instantly at the sight of her deadly whiteness. It seemed impossible that blood could drain so swiftly from the skin. His own face blazed like fire from the slap of her hand across his cheek. He noticed, as he sat very still, the strange terror that hid beneath her bitter, staring eyes: it wasn’t any terror of the law, the cheek of which she had symbolically in his person just so vigorously slapped; it wasn’t any terror of what he or the machine he represented could do to her—what anyone or anything could do to her. … It was baffling; baffling as the undiscoverable source of any intense emotional reaction is baffling—something that drew its sustenance from roots imbedded not in the immediate present but in the past. …
“You will permit me to offer my apologies?” he said.
She returned vividly to the moment, and her colour swept back in a succession of bright waves.
“I am not usually so unmannerly,” she said.
“Nor usually subjected to insult. The fault was mine.”
Her laugh was quite harsh. “On the contrary, Lieutenant, I am accustomed to insult.”
“Then why do you stay with Mrs. Endicott?” he said softly.