"Maybe, if you'd let her go."
"Not in a thousand years! She's mine. They ain't no face but hers that I can see opposite to me at the table—not one! Besides, she's mine, and I'm going to keep her—after I've taught her a lesson or two!"
Sinclair wiped his forehead hastily. Eagerness to jump at the throat of the man consumed him. He forced a smile on his thin lips and persistently looked down.
"But think how easy it'd be, Cartwright. Think how easy you could get a divorce on the grounds of desertion."
"And drag all this shame into the courts?"
"They's ways of hushing these here things up. It'd be easy. She wouldn't put up no defense, mostlike. You'd win your case. And if anybody asked questions, they'd simply say she was crazy, and that you was lucky to get rid of her. They wouldn't blame you none. And it wouldn't be no disgrace to be deserted by a crazy woman, would it?"
Cartwright drew back into a shell of opposition. "You talk pretty hot for this."
"Because I'm telling you the way out for both of you."
"I can't see it. She's coming back to me. Nobody else is going to get her. I've set my mind on it!"
"Partner, don't you see that neither of you could ever be happy?"