rage leaped into her eyes. She seized him by the lapels and shook him. "Stupid!" she cried, and was more deeply angered by the futility of the word. "Stupid!"
Henry was astounded at her frenzy, but still tender. "Billie!" he expostulated, grasping her hands. "Billie! Won't you understand?" His appeal was desperate. "I have to do it. It's a matter of conscience."
"Conscience!" she scorned. "It's for that stubborn little Indian!"
"No, no; not for any individual," he insisted. "For something infinitely bigger. Won't you see, dear?" he implored humbly. "Oh, why won't you let me make it clear to you so that you can make it clear to your father? And then all this will be un"
"To my father!" the girl raged, and flung his hands from hers, contemptuous at his presuming still to reflect upon either her father's intelligence or his moral judgments. "You fool!" Her glance scorched. "You . . . you traitor!" She breathed that last denunciation slowly, with the utmost of feeling, and the slightest of vocalization, looked at him for an instant longer to burn the brand in, then stepped out of the car as from contamination.
Harrington was stunned rather than hurt—sick with dismay at the discovery that Billie was as blind as the others. Where, he marveled, was all that wonderful sympathy for the poor and downtrodden of earth which she had manifested in his earlier talks with her—words of hers that had quickened and inspired him into the very position in which he found himself today? Where was it? Nowhere, he perceived, when reflections on her father were involved. He, to her, was a god who would not err.
