"You're as bad as grandfather," he said, "and it's like jumping from the frying-pan into the fire. I'll be hanged if I knew you were a shrew when I married you!"
Molly's eyes fairly blazed, and as she shook her head with an enraged gesture, her hair, tumbling upon her shoulders, flooded her with light. Even in the midst of his fury his ready senses responded to the appeal of her dishevelled loveliness.
"And I'll be—anything if I knew you were a drunkard!" she retorted, pressing her hand upon her panting breast.
"Well, you ought to have known it," he sneered, "for I was one. Christopher Blake could have told you so. But if I remember rightly, you weren't so precious particular at the time. You were glad enough to get anybody, as it happened!"
"How—how dare you?" wailed Molly, in the helplessness of her rage, and throwing herself upon the lounge, she beat her hands upon the wooden sides and burst into despairing sobs. "Why, oh, why did I marry you?" she moaned between choking gasps.
"Some said it was because Fred Turner threw you over," returned Will savagely, and having hurled his last envenomed dart, he seized his hat and rushed out into the night.
The scene had worked like madness on his nerves, and in the darkness of the lane, where the trees kept out the moonbeams, he still saw the flickering lights that he had left behind him in the room. He had eaten nothing all day, and his empty stomach oppressed him with a sensation of nausea. His head spun like a top, and as he walked the road rocked in long seesaws beneath his feet. Yet his one craving was for drink, drink, more drink.
Running rather than walking, he reached the store at last, and went back to the little smoky room where Tom Spade was drawing beer from the big keg in one corner.
"Give me something to eat, Tom; I'm starving," he said; "and whisky. I must have whisky or I'll die."
"It's my belief that you'll die if you do have it," responded Tom. "As for bread and meat, however, Susan will give you a bite an' welcome." Nevertheless, he poured out the whisky, and, leaving it upon one of the dirty tables, went hastily out in search of Mrs. Spade.