Again Yarnall swore. But he lit a cigarette and took his time about answering. “Well, sir,” he said, “you must excuse me, but—it was because she saw you, I take it, that Jane cut off this morning. That’s clear. Now, I don’t know what would make a girl run off from her husband. She might have any number of reasons, bad and good, but it seems to me that it would be a pretty strong one that would make a girl run off, with a look such as she wore, from a man like you. Did you treat her well, Landis?”
It had the effect of a lash taken by a penitent. The man shrank a little, whitened, endured. “I can’t tell you how I treated her,” he said in a dangerous voice; “it don’t bear tellin’. But—I want her back. I was—I was—that was three years ago; I am more like a man now. You’ll give me the people’s name, their address?...”
Pierre laid his hand on the older man’s wrist and gave it a queer urgent and beseeching shake.
After a moment of searching scrutiny, Yarnall bent his head.
“Very well,” said he shortly; “come in.”