"Can you deny these things?" she persisted coldly.
"Absolutely!" Armstrong came to his feet. "It's a lie, all of it! A cursed lie! Dot, I give you my word of honor—"
"Don't," she said coldly. "I don't believe you."
These words delivered the worst blow that Armstrong had ever received. For a moment he actually reeled under their impact, disbelieving his own senses. He stared at Dorothy from distended eyes; then a rush of frightful anger flamed into his face.
"You don't believe me!" he repeated. "God forgive you for saying such a thing—"
"Oh, let's have no heroics, Reese," she intervened. Her savage and relentless cruelty stung him to the very soul. "I've discovered the whole affair, and now I am laying a choice before you. I know why you are fighting Macgowan so desperately. I know why you pretend to fight on behalf of the sixteen thousand investors—"
"Pretend!" he uttered in a strangled voice. "Pretend!"
"—and now it is going to end." She was cold, inexorable, emotionless. "You may as well learn that if you keep up this fight, you'll end by being branded as a felon. I would stick by you through that disgrace, Reese, if it were achieved in a just cause. Now that I know the truth, now that I know retribution is upon you for what you did to my father—it's all ended for me."
She paused an instant, then went on.
"Go and see Macgowan. It may be too late, but at least make the effort. Give up this fight. Abandon this righteous pose of yours, and be done with it. Either that, or I shall leave this house immediately."