“Won’t need Billy any more!” I exclaimed with a rage that made my voice literally scorch past my lips.  “Was there ever a minute in his life that I haven’t needed Billy?  How dare you say such a thing to me?  You are cruel, cruel, and I have always known it, cold and cruel like all other men who don’t care how they wring the life-blood out of women’s hearts, and are willing to use their children to do it with.  Even the law doesn’t help us poor helpless creatures, and you can take our children and go with them to the ends of the earth and leave us suffering.  I have gone on and believed that you were not like what the women say all men are, and that you cared whether you hurt people or not, but now I see that you are just the same, and you’ll take my baby away if you want to—­and I can do nothing to prevent it—­nothing in the wide world—­I am completely and absolutely helpless—­you coward, you!”

When that awful word, the worst word that a woman can use to a man, left my lips, a flame shot up into his eyes that I thought would burn me up, but in a half second it was extinguished by the strangest thing in the world—­for the situation—­a perfect flood of mirth.  He sat down in his chair and shook all over, with his head in his hands, until I saw tears creep through his fingers.  I had calmed down now so suddenly that I was about to begin to cry in good earnest when he wiped his eyes and said with a low laugh in his throat—­

“The case is yours, Molly, settled out of court, and the ‘possession-nine-points-of-the-law clause’ works in some cases for a woman against a man.  Generally speaking, anyway, the pup belongs to the man who can whistle him down, and you can whistle Bill from me any day.  I’m just his father, and what I think or want doesn’t matter.  You had better take him and keep him!”

“I intend to,” I answered haughtily, uncertain as to whether I had better give in and be agreeable, or stay prepared to cry in case there was further argument.  But suddenly a strange diffidence came into his eyes, and he looked away from me as he said in queer hesitating words—­

“You see, Mrs. Molly, I thought, from now on, your life wouldn’t have exactly a place for Bill.  Have you considered that you have trained him to demand you all the time and all of you?  How would you manage Bill—­and—­and other claims?”

And if there is a contagious thing in this world it is embarrassment.  I never felt anything worse in all my life than the shame that swept over me in a great hot wave when that look came into his eyes and made me realise just exactly what I had been saying to him, about what, and how I had said it.  I stood perfectly still, shook all over like a leaf, and wondered if I would ever be able to raise my eyes from the ground.  A dizzy nauseated feeling for myself rose up in me against myself, and I was just about to turn on my heels and leave him, I hoped for ever, when he came over and laid his hand on my shoulder.