They looked at each other unflinchingly, neither speaking.
McKeith's lips were resolute, locked, his pugnacious jaw set like iron.
Here was the stubborn determination of a fighting man, never to admit himself in the wrong.

And his eyes seemed to have a steel curtain over them--which, however, had Bridget's spiritual intuition been awake to perceive it, softened for an instant, letting through a gleam of passionate appeal.
But Bridget's soul was steel-cased also.

He saw only contempt, repulsion in her gaze.

The larger issues narrowed to a conflict of two egoisms.

It seemed to both as though, in the space of that last quarter of an hour, they had become mortal foes.
The police inspector broke in upon the tense silence.