He stood knitting his brows, as if preoccupied.

Imogene wondered if he had been following her at the last.
"I'll speak to him about his principles in connection with Ruth," he said.

The utterance was amazingly dispassionate.

Then quite unexpectedly he remarked, "I've never yet had to kill a man, never as yet." Imogene shuddered, and she was terrified.

It was as if a curtain had been jerked aside disclosing figures grouped for tragedy.
"It must never come to that," she breathed.
Bryant stirred, then began to look about the room.