In the faces of men who have dominion of whatever kind over their fellow
men--be it the brutal rule of the prize fighter over his gang or the
apparently gentle sway of the apparently meek bishop over his loving
flock--in the faces of all men of power there is a dangerous look. They
may never lose their tempers. They may never lift their voices. They may
be ever suave and civil. The dangerous look is there--and the danger
behind it. And the sense of that look and of its cause has a certain
restraining effect upon all but the hopelessly impudent or solidly
dense. Norman was one of the men without fits of temper. In his moments
of irritation, no one ever felt that a storm of violent language might
be impending. But the danger signal flaunted from his face. Danger of
what? No one could have said. Most people would have laughed at the idea
that so even tempered a man, pleased with himself and with the world,
could ever be dangerous. Yet everyone had instinctively respected that
danger flag--until Dorothy.
Perhaps it had struck for her--had really not been there when she looked
at him. Perhaps she had been too inexperienced, perhaps too
self-centered, to see it. Perhaps she had never before seen his face in
an hour of weariness and relaxation--when the true character, the
dominating and essential trait or traits, shows nakedly upon the
surface, making the weak man or woman look pitiful, the strong man or
woman formidable.
However that may be, when he walked into the sitting room, greeted her
placidly and kissed her on the brow, she, glancing uncertainly up at
him, saw that danger signal for the first time. She studied his face,
her own face wearing her expression of the puzzled child. No, not quite
that expression as it always had been theretofore, but a modified form
of it. To any self-centered, self-absorbed woman--there comes in her
married life, unless she be married to a booby, a time, an hour, a
moment even--for it can be narrowed down to a point--when she takes her
first _seeing_ look at the man upon whom she is dependent for protection,
whether spiritual or material, or both. In her egotism and vanity she
has been regarding him as her property. Suddenly, and usually
disagreeably, it has been revealed to her that she is his property. That
hour had come for Dorothy Norman. And she was looking at her husband,
was wondering who and what he was.
"You've had your lunch?" he said.
"No," replied she.
"You have been out for the air?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"You didn't tell me what to do."