"Don't let me interrupt you, please. I'll be quiet."
"I don't mean to let anything interrupt me until I have finished what I have undertaken to do; I'm past all that, now."
"So you told me two evenings ago," she reminded him gently, adding: "And I have heard about what you did last night."
"About the newspaper fracas? You don't approve of anything like that, of course. Neither did I, once. But you were right in what you said the other evening out at the dam; there is no middle way. You know what the animal tamers tell us about the beasts. I've had my taste of blood. There are a good many men in this world who need killing. Crawford Stanton is one of them, and I'm not sure that Mr. David Kinzie isn't another."
"I can't hear what you say when you talk like that," she objected, looking past him with the gray eyes veiled.
"Do you want me to lie down and let them put the steam-roller over me?" he demanded irritably. "Is that your ideal of the perfect man?"
"I didn't say any such thing as that, did I?"
"Perhaps not, in so many words. But you meant it."
"What I said, and what I meant, had nothing at all to do with Timanyoni High Line and its fight for life," she said calmly, recalling the wandering gaze and letting him see her eyes. "I was thinking altogether of one man's attitude toward his world."
"That was night before last," he put in soberly. "I've gone a long way since night before last, Corona."