The girl screamed hysterically as the door was flung open, and the lamplight swooped and flared in the gust from the hall, and David, white and shaking, came in.
Then there was a pause. Tom dropped his arms, and Gabrielle crossed to David, and, quite automatically and without moving his eyes from Tom, David put his arm about her. And Gabrielle laid one hand upon his shoulder, and hid her face wearily against his breast, and clung there, as he had seen a storm-blown gull cling to some chance-found shelter, without moving, without seeing, without sound.
Tom stood beside the table upon which he rested one big knotted hand. His hair was in disorder, his head hung forward menacingly, like the threatening jowl of a bulldog. He was the first to speak.
“Well, Dave, you can keep out of this,” he said, in a slow measured voice. “She’s going to marry me. She promised me to-night—didn’t you, Gabrielle? Tell him so—tell him you promised me. What’s”—Tom’s voice, under David’s steady look, and opposed to the strange silence in the storm-bound room, and the strange and awful paleness of David’s face, faltered slightly, and became less confident—“what’s the trouble?” he said.
“Shall we talk about this to-morrow, Tom?” David said, in a constrained tone.
“No, by God, we’ll talk about it now!” Tom answered. “I may be sick—or I may have been sick, for that’s more like it! But you’ve no need to talk to me as if I were a baby!”
“David——” Gabrielle breathed, against his breast.
“I’ll not leave you, dear,” he answered, very low, his lips against the tawny hair. “Tom, old boy, shall we go downstairs? We’re all nervous and upset to-night. I’ve got to talk to you.”
“Tell him you are going to marry me, Gay!” Tom said, savagely, without altering his position or seeming to see David.
“No, Tom,” David said, strangely and sadly,—“you can’t—I’m sorry, Tom. But you two—you two——” he went on, stammering, and looking from Gay’s face to the other man’s with infinite pity and distress. “You can’t marry her, Tom, now or ever. I’ve—I’ve got something to tell you that will make a difference.”