“I can show the register if you like. It was at a church in——”
“I don’t want proof. I believe it. I might have known it from the first. She looks his wife. But I——”
She put up her hands and gave a short, wounded cry.
“The position’s favorable for us,” Sutton said complacently. “Of course, you don’t care for him, a brute who strikes and bullies you. Besides, he’ll throw you over before long. It’s getting a little too hot for him. She suspects and you suspect. He’s afraid you’ll be clawing each other’s faces. You see—it’s an ugly word—he’s committed bigamy. He may be found out any day. That means——”
“I know, I know,” she said, sharply nodding her head several times; “but I should never give him away. Never, never.”
“We needn’t send him to prison. He wouldn’t be any use to us there,” Sutton said, with a gesture of assent. “But we can bleed him pretty regularly. He’s in a tight corner, poor old chap. I can give him away on the business side and you on the matrimonial.”
He laughed with relish. She said, in the most matter-of-fact way, “If you laugh like that again, I think I shall kill you.”
“What a queer girl you are!” His voice was steady, but he made a furtive movement toward the grate, where there were fire irons—efficient weapons—if he wanted them. He was thinking uneasily, in his common, literal way, that she was a big woman, that she looked deuced queer, that a woman when her blood was up was ten times worse than a man.
“What a queer girl you are!” he repeated rather timidly. “Do you forgive him?”
Her head was down on her breast.