Bruce’s heavy brows lowered. He did not give back a step before her ireful figure.
“And because he’s old and unpopular I should not attack him, eh?” he demanded. “Because he’s down, I should not hit him? That’s your woman’s reasoning, is it? Well, let me tell you,” and his gray eyes flashed, and his voice had a crunching tone—“that I believe when you’ve got an enemy of society down, don’t, because you pity him, let him up to go and do the same thing again. While you’ve got him down, keep on hitting him till you’ve got him finished!”
“Like the brute that you are!” she cried. “But, like the coward you are, you first very carefully choose your ‘enemy of society.’ You were careful to choose one who could not hit back!”
“I did not choose your father. He thrust himself upon the town’s attention. And I consider neither his weakness nor his strength. I consider only the fact that your father has done the city a greater injury than any man who ever lived in Westville.”
“It’s a lie! I tell you it’s a lie!”
“It’s the truth!” he declared harshly, dominantly. “His swindling Westville by giving us a worthless filtering-plant in return for a bribe—why, that is the smallest evil he has done the town. Before that time, Westville was on the verge of making great municipal advances—on the verge of becoming a model and a leader for the small cities of the Middle West. And now all that grand development is ruined—and ruined by that man, your father!” He excitedly jerked a paper from his pocket and held it out to her. “If you want to see what he has brought us to, read that editorial in the Clarion!”
She fixed him with glittering eyes.
“I have read one cowardly editorial to-day in a Westville paper. That is enough.”
“Read that, I say!” he commanded.
For answer she took the Clarion and tossed it into the waste-basket. She glared at him, quivering all over, in her hands a convulsive itch for physical vengeance.