Then we had rushed toward each other, hands extended in warm, affectionate greeting ... now ... I slowly sauntered up to him.
"Yes, Penton, what do you want; how much longer are you going to torture your wife?"
"—yours now, Johnnie; mine no longer!" grimly.
"If she were wholly mine, I'd knock you flat ... but you still have a sort of right in her that protects you from what I otherwise might do to you."
"For heaven's sake, let's be calm."
"Calm—when you say in your letter, 'you need not be afraid, I meditate no harm?'—do you mean to imply that, under any circumstance, I would be afraid of you?"
"Johnnie, there is only one way to settle this ... I'm set on getting the complete evidence for a divorce ... exactly where is Hildreth now?"
"None of your damned business ... all I can say is that she is somewhere near here ... and she's sick and hysterical through your persecutions ... and if you don't call off your snooping detectives, by the Lord God, if I run into any of them, I'll try to kill them."
"Johnnie, it's the best thing to deliver the legal evidence and have it over with. Let me accompany you to where Hildreth is, and—"
"If she set eyes on you," I replied, "she'd fly at you and scratch your eyes out—in her present mood."