Again she shivered. "Yes," she said, "I killed him."
"And that's why I hate you," Palmer went on, calm and deliberate—except his eyes; they were terrible. "A few minutes ago—when I was exulting that he would probably die—just then I found that opened cable on the mantel. Do you know what it did to me? It made me hate you. When I read it——" Freddie puffed at his cigarette in silence. She dropped weakly to the chair at the dressing table.
"Curse it!" he burst out. "I loved him. Yes, I was crazy about him—and am still. I'm glad I killed him. I'd do it again. I had to do it. He owed me his life. But that doesn't make me forgive you."
A long silence. Her fingers wandered among the articles spread upon the dressing table. He said:
"You're getting ready to leave?"
"I'm going to a hotel at once."
"Well, you needn't. I'm leaving. You're done with me. But I'm done with you." He rose, bent upon her his wicked glance, sneering and cruel. "You never want to see me again. No more do I ever want to see you again. I wish to God I never had seen you. You cost me the only friend I ever had that I cared about. And what's a woman beside a friend—a man friend? You've made a fool of me, as a woman always does of a man—always, by God! If she loves him, she destroys him. If she doesn't love him, he destroys himself."
Susan covered her face with her bare arms and sank down at the dressing table. "For pity's sake," she cried brokenly, "spare me—spare me!"
He seized her roughly by the shoulder. "Just flesh!" he said. "Beautiful flesh—but just female. And look what a fool you've made of me—and the best man in the world dead—over yonder! Spare you? Oh, you'll pull through all right. You'll pull through everything and anything—and come out stronger and better looking and better off. Spare you! Hell! I'd have killed you instead of him if I'd known I was going to hate you after I'd done the other thing. I'd do it yet—you dirty skirt!"
He jerked her unresisting form to its feet, gazed at her like an insane fiend. With a sob he seized her in his arms, crushed her against his breast, sunk his fingers deep into her hair, kissed it, grinding his teeth as he kissed. "I hate you, damn you—and I love you!" He flung her back into the chair—out of his life. "You'll never see me again!" And he fled from the room—from the house.