“Besides, your wife has her own ideals. That’s hard for us men to understand. Ideals quite detached from us; from all that we might like to believe is good for us. I have my own life, Rivers. Frankly, I was tempted to turn my back on it and with courage set sail for a new port. I had contemplated that, but I’m going back to it and, by God’s help, live it!”
And now Northrup’s face twitched. He waited a moment and then went hopelessly on:
“What the future holds––who knows? Life is a thundering big thing, Rivers, if we play it square, and I’m going to play it square as it’s given me to see it. You don’t believe me?” Almost a wistfulness rang in the words. Larry leaned back and laughed a hollow, ugly laugh.
“Believe you?” he said. “Hell, no!”
“I thought you couldn’t.” Northrup got up.
Around the edges of the lowered shades, a gray, drear light gave warning of coming day. The effect of Larry’s last drink was wearing off––he looked near the breaking point.
“Rivers, I’ll make a pact with you. Set your wife free––in my way. If you do that, I’ll leave the place; never see her again unless a higher power than yours or mine decrees otherwise in the years on ahead. Take your last chance, man, to do the only decent thing left you to do: start afresh somewhere else. Forget it all. I know this sounds devilish easy and I know it’s devilish hard, but”––and here the iron was driven into Rivers’s consciousness––“either you or I set Mary-Clare free before”––he hesitated; he wanted to give all that he humanly could––“before another forty-eight hours.”
Larry felt the cold perspiration start on his forehead; his stomach grew sick.
Faint and fear-filled, he seemed to feel Maclin after him; Mary-Clare confronting him, smileless, terrifying. On the other hand he saw freedom; money; a place in which he could breathe, once more, with Maclin’s hands off his throat and Mary-Clare’s coldness forgotten.