"I'll be damned if I do—" he ejaculated. He was white with chagrin to think that his stupidity had trapped him into such an annoying situation. He was moving blindly toward the stairway; all he wanted was a quick termination of the whole irritating interview.
Felicia stopped him. She put her hand on his arm.
"Let me explain for you a little," she pleaded, "I am sorry that these lawyer men do not understand. I know exactly how you happened to do it. You didn't mean to take it at first, did you? I know because I once took something that was not mine. It was food," she smiled a little at the memory. "It did not seem like stealing because it was just a little food. It just seemed like something I wanted and that I must have and so I took it. Maybe that was the way it was with you about 'The Magician.' It was something that you wanted and must have! Perhaps it didn't seem like stealing because it was only something that was written on a paper. It wasn't even like something you could hold in your hand. It was just something somebody wrote down on some pieces of paper. Maybe you didn't understand that it was all of her hopes and dreams—"
"Gad! What a Sunday School you do keep!" he sneered. He tried to pass her. He had jammed his hat back upon his head. Perhaps he would have actually gotten away from her only that that was the moment that Dulcie Dierckt opened the long French doors at the head of the little outside stairway and motioned down the steps to the excited man who was following her.
"There's Mr. Graemer," she said; "here's some one to see you," she called wickedly, as she leaned across the balcony.
It was all over so quickly that afterward neither the Poetry Girl nor the lawyer could tell how it happened. Dulcie could tell a little more because she watched it from above.
Dudley Hamilt went down that narrow stairway in a sort of running leap. He faced the agitated Mr. Graemer squarely but he gave him something less than half a minute in which to defend himself. And then he proceeded with a most satisfying thoroughness to pummel and pound and thump. Their struggling figures shoved to and fro in the pebbled paths. Janet and Molly O'Reilly ran screaming from their kitchen. The Poetry Girl scrambled out of their way by jumping to an iron bench. She dragged Felicia up after her.
"Stop them! Stop them!" shrieked the Poetry Girl.
But beside her Felicia clasping her little hands under her chin, watched with shining eyes; her anger was as the anger of the man who was fighting. She did not realize who he was or why he had come to the defense of her Blythe. She only knew that he was doing exactly what she had been longing to do ever since she had first heard about the acquisitive Mr. Graemer. And when she heard Blythe Modder shouting beside her she began to shout too. Only she did not entreat them to stop fighting. A curious thrill of victory made her voice vibrant with rapture.
"Do not stop striking him! Do not stop!"