He gave an exclamation, not words, just a choked, fierce sound, and dropping his hands on the table, burst out like a volcano:
"The dogs! The devils! Dragging her down there to terrify a lie out of her!"
He leaped to his feet, sending the chair crashing down on the floor. I fell back where I sat paralyzed, not only by his words, but at the sight of him.
I think I've spoken of the fact that he had a violent temper and he's told me himself that he's conquered it. But now for the first time I saw it and believe me it was far from dead. I would hardly have known him. His face was savage, his eyes blazing, and the words came from him as if they were shot out on the breaths that broke in great heaving gasps from his lungs.
"Haven't you," he said, "a woman, any heart in you? Are you, that I've always thought all kindness and generosity, willing to hound an innocent girl to her ruin?"
He grabbed the back of a chair near him and leaned over it glaring at me, shaking, gasping, and the color of ashes.
"But—but," I faltered, "she's done it."
"She hasn't," he shouted. "You're all fools, imbeciles, mad. It's a lie—an infamous, brutal lie!"
He dropped the chair and turned away, beginning to pace up and down, his hands clenched, raging to himself. The room was full of the sound of his breathing, as if some great throbbing piece of machinery was inside him.
And I—there in my seat, fallen limp against the back—saw it all. What a fool I'd been—what an idiot! He with his empty heart and that beautiful girl—the girl that any man might have loved and how much more Jack Reddy, knowing her poor and lonesome and believing her innocent and persecuted. I felt as if the skies had fallen on me. My hero—that I'd never found a woman good enough for—in love with a murderess!