Bowden, who felt himself cornered, advanced, and said with a last show of courage:
“Mr. Garford, I don’t understand this scene in the least and I must insist—insist, do you hear—that you open that door.”
Garford rose, and, though his voice still maintained a certain calm, his hands twitched at his sides, as he said,
“Bowden, you don’t think this was an accident, do you?”
“Why, what—what do you mean?”
“I know!”
As he said this for the first time, the rage in his soul came thronging into the exclamation. He caught at a chair to steady himself. Bowden recoiled in terror; the woman, shrieking, flung herself at the feet of her husband, crying:
“Don’t kill me, Dan; don’t kill me!”
He stood swaying under the shock of her body against his knees, recovering his self-control, with a smile of contempt at the young coward shrinking against the wall, a moment that paid him back for the humiliation of months.
“I am not going to kill you—not yet,” he said slowly. “Get up!”