“No,” said Berny, her voice beginning to vibrate, “he hasn’t told me all about it. He’s told me just as much as he thought I ought to know.”
Her glance, riveted on Rose’s face, contained a fierce antagonism that was like an illumination of hatred shining through her speech. “He didn’t think it was necessary to tell me everything that happened up there, Miss Cannon.”
Rose turned half from her without answering. The action was like that of a child which shrinks from the angry face of punishment. Berny leaned forward that she might still see her and went on.
“He couldn’t tell me all that happened up at Antelope. There are some things that it wouldn’t have done for him to tell me. A man doesn’t tell his wife about his affairs with other women. But sometimes, Miss Cannon, she finds them out.”
Rose turned suddenly upon her.
“Mrs. Ryan,” she said in a cold, authoritative voice, “what do you want to say to me? You stopped me just now to say something. Whatever it is, say it and say it out.”
Berny’s rages invariably worked themselves out on the same lines. With battle boiling within her, she could preserve up to a certain point a specious, outward calm. Then suddenly, at some slight, harmless word, some touch as light as the pressure on the electric button that sets off the dynamite explosion, the bonds of her wrath were broken and it burst into expression. Now her enforced restraint was torn into shreds, and she cried, her voice quavering with passion, shaken with breathlessness:
“What do you suppose I want to say? I want to ask you what right you’ve got to try and steal my husband?”
“I have no right,” said Rose.
Berny was, for the moment, so taken aback, that she said nothing but stared with her whole face set in a rigidity of fierce attention. After a moment’s quivering amaze she burst out,