"Why—why—musta scared you," he stammered.
Sophie Carey stepped close to him. Her fingers touched the revolver in his hand. Her husband jerked it away. Its muzzle, for a wavering moment, pointed at Clancy. She did not move. She was not frightened; she was fascinated. She marveled at Sophie's cool courage. For Mrs. Carey reached again for the weapon. This time, Carey did not resist; he surrendered it to her. Then Clancy understood how tremendous had been the strain, not merely for her but for Sophie. The older woman would have fallen but for the wall against which her shoulders struck. But her voice was steady when she spoke.
"I suppose that there's some explanation, Don?"
Clancy wondered if she would ever achieve Sophie's perfect poise. She wondered if it could be acquired, or if people were born with it. It was not pretense in Sophie Carey's case, at any rate. The casualness of her tone was not assumed. Somehow, she made Clancy think of those grandes dames of the French Revolution who played cards as the summons to the tumbrils came, and who left the game as jauntily as though they went to the play.
For Clancy knew that Sophie Carey had forgiven her husband the other day for the last time; that hope, so far as he was concerned, was now ashes in her bosom forever. To a woman of Mrs. Carey's type, this present humiliation must make her suffer as nothing else in the world could do. Yet, because she was herself, her voice held no trace of pain.
"'Explanation?'" Carey was mastered by her self-control. "Why—course there is! Why——" He took the refuge of the weak. He burst into temper. "'Course there is!" he cried again. "Dirty little spy! Trying to get me in bad. Stopped her—wanted to scare her——"
"Don!" His wife's voice stopped his shrill utterance.
She straightened up, no longer leaning against the wall for support. "You stopped her? Why?" She raised her hand, quelling his reply. "No lies, Don; I want the truth."
Carey's mouth opened; it shut again. He looked hastily about him, as though seeking some road for flight. He glanced toward the revolver that his wife held. For a moment Clancy thought that he would spring for it. But if he held such thought, he let it go, conquered by his wife's spirit.