It hung about him; it crouched behind the women's expectant eyes; then suddenly it sprang forth like an ugly beast into a perfumed garden.
It came in a moment: a little scuffle at the bar opposite, as a heavy, fair-bearded man disengaged himself from the crowd about him, a little flutter of interest as he made an unsteady way across the waxed floor, a little smothered scream from the girl as he lurched up to the table and paused, gazing at her with angry, bloodshot eyes.
For a second of silence the two looked at each other--the girl with a frightened, fascinated gaze, the man with the slow insolence that drink induces.

At last, muttering some words in a guttural tongue unknown to the boy, he swayed forward and laid a heavy red hand upon her shoulder.
The gesture was brutal, masterful, expressive.

A sense of mental sickness seized upon Max; while the woman Lize suddenly braced herself, changing from the inert, half-hypnotized creature of a moment before into a being of fury.
"_Sapristi_!" she cried aloud.

"A pretty lover to come wooing!" And she added a phrase that had never found place in Max's vocabulary, and at which the surrounding people laughed.
The words and the laugh were tow to the fire of the man's rage.

He freed the girl's arm and struck the table with a resounding violence that made the glasses dance.
It was the signal for a scene.