Children of no Man's Land by G.B. Stern — Read

I

But Cliffe Kennedy was indubitably to blame. No one could spend so much time with Cliffe as Deb had done of late, without echoing his tendency to achieve a climax at whatever cost. His sense of dramatic effect abhorred a vacuum. Deb had caught the trick, that was all. She was always impressionable. "I have treated you with the respect due to a good girl... " and then the pause-and, spoken almost mechanically, her curtain line.