"Do you dare so say that to me ?" "Yes.

I can't help it.

I pity them; my whole heart is with those poor men." "You impudent puppy!" shouted the old man.

He lifted his hand and struck his son in the face.

Conrad caught his hand with his own left, and, while the blood began to trickle from a wound that Christine's intaglio ring had made in his temple, he looked at him with a kind of grieving wonder, and said, "Father!" The old man wrenched his fist away and ran out of the house.