“Take me! Take me—but save him!” she pleaded.
“Good God, it’s not just you I want—it’s—it’s your feelin’s, it’s your love that I’ve got to have!”
“Oh!” she moaned, covering her face with her hands.
“It’s a queer way of makin’ love, eh?—but I mean it! And I want to know if you’re goin’ to swing in with me and get taken care of, or not?”
“Oh, you fool, you fool!” she cried suddenly, smiting the air with her vehemently closed fists. “You poor, miserable fool! I loathe and hate the very sound of your voice! I despise every inch of your brutish, bloated body! I’d die—I’d kill myself ten times over before I’d so much as touch you!”
He looked at her gathering storm of rage, first in wonder, and then in a slow and deadly anger that blanched his face and left only the two claret-colored blotches on his withered cheeks.
“I’ll give you one last chance,” he said, clenching his flaccid jaw.
“Chance! I don’t want a chance! Now I know how things must go! Now I know how to act! And before we settle it between us, and if I have to—to lose everything, I want you to know one thing. I want you to know that I’m doing it for Durkin! I’m doing it all, everything, for him!”
“For Durkin?” he choked, with an oath. “What are you fightin’ for that washed-out welcher for?”
“Because Durkin is my husband!” she said, in her ashen white determination, as she stepped quickly to the door and double-locked it. “And because I would die for him”—she laughed shrilly, horribly, as she said it—“before I’d see him hurt or unhappy!”