"All right then, Kaire," said Jaffrey Bretton. "I'm going to smash you!"
"Oh, no, you won't!" laughed Kaire. "That's the limitation of good men like you! You'll think you're going to smash me!— you'll have every intention indeed of smashing me!—push me way to the edge!—but never quite over! Something won't let you! Honor, I believe you call it."
"I—am—going—to push you—over the edge," said Bretton. "I am going to send for Martha."
"Martha?" cried Kaire. His face was suddenly ashy gray. Then abruptly his laugh rang out again.
"There hasn't been power in heaven or earth for ten years," he scoffed, "that could bring Martha out of her green jungle when even so much as the smoke of a yacht showed on her horizon! Even 212 if she could slip by her attendant!" he scoffed, "or her Chinese cook!—or——"
"Martha is in the passageway—just outside," pointed Bretton. "About three feet, I should think, from where you are standing!"
"What?" staggered Kaire.
"And I am going to push Martha to the edge and over," said Bretton very quietly. "And you to the edge and over—and jump in after you with every wallowing truth I know—if by so doing, the little girl I begot in bewilderment and ignored in indifference— but have found at last in love and understanding remains on the safe side!"
With eyes half crazed Daphne stood staring from her father's grim face to Sheridan Kaire's blanching features.
"Do you mean——" she gasped, "that there is another woman? Someone who has a—a claim? Someone who——"