Bailey faced him, with his back to the door.
"Wait a minute, Jim."
"Get out o' my way."
There was a silence, and in that silence the two men faced each other as if under some strange light. They seemed alien to each other, yet familiar, too. Bailey spoke first:
"Jim, I know all about it. You're stealing another man's wife—and, by God, I won't let you do it!" His voice shook so that he hardly uttered his sentence intelligibly. The sweat of shame broke out on his face, but he did not falter. "I've seen this coming on all summer. I ought to have interfered before—"
Rivers laid a hand on him. "Stand out o' my way, or I'll kill you."
The quiver went out of Bailey's voice. He took his partner's hand down from his shoulder, and when he dropped it there was a bracelet of whitened flesh where his fingers had circled it. "You'll stay right here, Jim, till I say 'go.'"
Rivers reached for a weapon. "Will I?" he asked. "I wonder if I will?"
Blanche burst out: "Oh, Jim, don't! Please don't!"
The men did not hear her. They saw no one, heard no one. They were facing each other in utter disregard of time or place.