“The devil you do!” said a muttered growl.
“Oh, I do! I always wanted the love of an honest man.”
“An honest man!” again scoffed the deep bass of the other’s voice, with a short little laugh. It was MacNutt who spoke. “An honest man! Then what were you hanging round Sunset Bryan for?”
“Yes, an honest man,” went on the woman’s voice impetuously; “he is honest in his love for me, and that is all I care! Leave him to me, and I’ll give you everything. If it’s money you want, I’ll get you anything—anything in reason! I can still cheat and lie and steal for you, if you like—it was you who taught me how to do that!”
Durkin felt that he could stand no more of it; but still he listened, spellbound, incapable of action or thought.
“I’ve got to have money!” agreed MacNutt quietly. “That’s true enough!” Then he added insolently, “But I almost feel I’d rather have you!”
“No, no!” moaned the woman, seemingly in mingled horror and fear of him. “Only wait and I’ll get you what money I have here—every cent of it! It’s in my pocketbook, here, in the front room!”
Durkin could hear her short, hard breath, and the swish of her skirt as she fluttered across the bare floor into the other room. He could hear the other’s easy, half-deprecating, half-mocking laugh; and at the sound of it all the long-banked, smoldering, self-consuming fires of jealous rage that burned within him seemed to leap and burst into relieving flame. An invisible cord seemed to snap before his eyes—it might have been within his very brain, for all he knew.
“And now I kill him!” This one idea spun through his mind, the one living wheel in all the deadened machinery of consciousness.
Darting back until he felt the plaster of the narrow hallway behind him, he flung himself madly forward against the door again. He kicked with the solid flat of his boot-sole as he came, against the light pine, painted and grained to look like oak.