Harlan, shaken, gray with passion, his teeth set over his lower lip, rushed to the door and threw it open.
"D—n you, you get on the outside!" he panted. "I'm in the mood to kill you!"
Linton went. By his visit and his warning he had thrown a sop to his conscience. He had approached Harlan Thornton with something like desperation. Under his calmness he had long-hidden, consuming passion for Madeleine Presson—a love that had grown through the years, and now waited a fitting time of expression and the endorsement of assured position. If he had any doubts of the truth of the shameful story he had brought he concealed those doubts—he would not admit them to himself. He proposed to win the girl. He chose any weapons that would rout the interloper.
"I warn you that I shall protect her," he said, from the corridor.
"Take a warning from me, too: you get into my affairs, and you'll find hell fires cooler!"
"Your affairs do seem to have that flavor," declared Linton, walking away.
Thornton hurried to the headquarters that the corporations maintained in the hotel for Spinney. Spinney was not there. He ran back to his room and telephoned to the clerk of the hotel. He was informed that Mr. Spinney had gone away for a few days.
It was late, but he threw on his coat and hastened up street to the Presson home. The windows were dark. He did not have the assurance to arouse the family at that time of night.
By that time, walking in the crisp air of the winter night, he had soothed, somewhat, his fever of anger, sorrow, and shame.
Calmer, he had thoughts only for the bitter wrong that had been done Clare Kavanagh. Somehow it seemed that all were leagued against her—and him! Memory of her unselfishness, her simple faith in him, her abnegation, her true, little-woman trust in his career—it all rushed upon him. For a time he was almost ashamed to face what memory brought to him. Then manfully he set himself to read his heart—at least, he tried to. In the end, hidden in his room, he wept—honest tears of a strong man conscious that he was unable by his strength to hold disaster from an innocent. Even his attempt to find the rogue, Spinney, was futile. He wept, thinking of Clare Kavanagh—exiled from her home, bravely solving her problem of life alone. He went to sleep thinking of Clare Kavanagh.