"You've got to answer—before you and I go any farther!"
"Colina, think what you're doing!" he cried. "We must not quarrel."
"I'm not quarreling," she said with an odd, flinty quietness. "I'm trying to find out something necessary for me to know. You might as well answer. Do you think the breed was justified in shooting my father?"
Ambrose, baited beyond endurance, cried: "I do! He went into the man's house and laid hands on his property. Even a breed has rights."
Colina bowed her head as if in polite acceptance. "You had better go," she said in soft tones more terrible than a cry. "I am sorry I ever saw you!"
The bitterness of lovers' quarrels is in ratio with their passion for each other. These two loved with complete abandon, consequently each could wound the other maddeningly.
But the plant of their love, vigorous as it was, was not rooted in old acquaintance. When the top withered under the blasts of anger there was no store of life below. Now each was secretly terrified by the strangeness of the being to whom he had yielded his soul.
Ambrose, wild with pain, no longer recked what he said. "You make a man mad!" he cried. "You will not listen to reason. A thing must be so just because you want it that way. I rack my brains for words to save your feelings, and this is what I get! Very well, you shall have the bald truth."
"Leave the house!" cried Colina.
"Not until I have spoken out!"