"Oh, woman! Woman! The faithlessness! The treachery!" With a vast, magnificent expression of despair he dropped heavily on to the nearest chair without pausing to select a strong one.

Under the stress of his emotion and his weight the chair crumpled up; and he sat down on the floor with a violence which shook the house.

He sprang up, smothered, out of regard for the age and sex of Pollyooly, some language suggested by the occurrence, and with a terrific kick sent the fragments of the chair flying across the studio.

Then he howled, and holding his right toes in his left hand, hopped on his left leg.

He had forgotten that he was wearing thin, but patent-leather, shoes.
Then he put his feet gingerly upon the floor, ground his teeth, and roared: "Knock the stuffing out of me, will he?
I'll tear him limb from limb! The insidious villain! I'll teach him to come between me and the woman I love!" Sad to relate Pollyooly's heart, inured to violence by her battles with the young male inhabitants of the slum behind the Temple, where she had lodged before becoming the housekeeper of the Honourable John Ruffin, leapt joyfully at the thought of the fray, in spite of her friendship with Hilary Vance; and her quick mind grasped the fact that she might watch it in security from the door of her bedroom.