As though he thought the subject dismissed he walked heavily toward the door.
“You know how it stands. I have nothing more to say.” He knew that he had signally failed, and as a sudden resentment rose in him he exclaimed, almost brutally:
“I am darned glad the old man is dead; I am glad his mother’s dead, and I am glad I have got no son.”
The next moment she was at his side, and he felt that she clung to his arm. Her sensitive, beautiful face, all drawn with emotion, was raised to his.
“Oh, you’ll kill me—you’ll kill me! Just look how very ill I am; you are making me crazy. I just worship him.”
“Give him up, then,” said Ruggles steadily.
She faltered: “I can’t—I can’t—it won’t be for long”—with a terrible pathos in her voice. “You don’t know how different I can be: you don’t know what a new life we were going to lead.”
Stammering, and with intense meaning, Ruggles, looking down at her, said: “My dear child—my dear child!”
In his few words something perhaps made her see in a flash her past and what the question really was. She dropped Ruggles’ arm. She stood for a moment with her arms folded across her breast, her head bent down, and the man at the door waited, feeling that Dan’s whole life was in the balance of the moment. When she spoke again her voice was hard and entirely devoid of the lovely appealing quality which brought her so much admiration from the public.
“If I give him up,” she said slowly, “what will you do?”