"I see it now! I see why he's admitted that there was a woman bothering him. I see why he's tried to ring in that hotel waitress to make me think she was the one he went to see. I see it all; I see what a fool I've been, what a lying pup Bayard is with all his smug talk about helping me! Helping me ... when he's been helping himself to my wife!"
"Ned!"
"A month, eh?" he went on. "You've been here a month, have you? And he's known it; he's kept me here, by God, through fear, that's all. I confess it to you! I'd have been gone long ago but I was afraid of him! He's intimidated me on the pretext of doing it for my own good while he could steal my wife ... my wife ... you-u-u...."
He advanced slowly, reasonless eyes on hers now, and Ann backed swiftly, putting the table between them, watching him with fear stamped on her features.
"Ugh! The snake! The poison, lying, grovelling—"
"Ned!"
The sharpness of her cry, the way she straightened and stamped her foot and vibrated with indignation broke through his rage, even, and he stopped.
"You don't know what you're saying." Her voice quivered. "You're accusing the best man friend you've ever had; you're cursing one of the best men that ever walked ground, and you're doing it without reason!"
"Without reason, am I?" he parried, quieter, breathing hard, but controlling his voice. "It's without reason when he lives with me a month, seeing my wife day after day, knowing I've not seen her in years and then never breathing a word about it? It's without reason when he opens this room to you ... a room he's never let me look into, and tells you to use it? It's no reason when he runs away to town rather than face me here in your presence? Can you argue against that?
"And it's without reason when you stand there flushed to your hair, you guilty woman?"