"I'd rather be green," cried Peter, hotly, "than go through life with your rotten skepticism."
"Would you? You talk like an infant. Graham will want to marry some day,—and then what? Good Heavens! Hasn't anybody taken the trouble to tell you two any of the facts of life? You are neither of you fit to be allowed out in the streets without a nurse. It's appalling. Skeptical, you call me. You're blind, I tell you. Blind! So's the old man in the next room. There's an ugly shadow over this house, Peter, as sure as you're alive. Don't stand there glaring at me. I'm talking facts. If you've got any regard for your brother and his health and his future; if you want to save your mother from unutterable suffering and your father from a hideous awakening, don't talk any further drivel to me, but make up your mind that the girl, Ita Strasbosck, has it in her power to turn Graham into a suicide. She's a liar—a liar and a trickster and a menace—and I'll make it my business to prove it to you and Graham."
"You can't."
"Can't I? We'll see about that. And you've got to help me. We've got to make Graham see that he must shake her off at once,—at once, I tell you. The alternative you know."
Peter got up and strode about the room. He was worried and anxious. He didn't, unfortunately, fully appreciate the gravity of this affair, because, as Kenyon had said so tauntingly, he was a child in such matters. But what he did appreciate was that his only brother had done something, however sympathetic the motive, which might have far-reaching consequences and which did away with the possibility of his going, as it was Peter's determination to go, clean and straight to a good girl.
He turned to Kenyon, who had made himself comfortable. "I'll help you for all I'm worth, Nick," he said.
"Right," said Kenyon. "I'll think out a line of action and let you know to-morrow. There's no time to be lost."
XII
Kenyon got rid of Peter, too.