“I think that will be about all, Bannister?” he said. He spoke quietly, but his voice trembled.
But Bailey’s long-dammed hatred, having at last found an outlet, was not to be checked in a moment.
“Will it? Will it? The hell it will. Let me tell you that I came here to talk straight to you, and I’m going to do it. It’s about time you had your darned dime-novel romance shown up to you the way it strikes somebody else. You think you’re a tremendous dashing twentieth-century Young Lochinvar, don’t you? You thought you had done a pretty smooth bit of work when you sneaked Ruth away! You! You haven’t enough backbone in you even to make a bluff at working to support her. You’re just what my father said you were—a loafer who pretends to be an artist. You’ve got away with it up to now, but you’ve shown yourself up at last. You damned waster!”
Kirk walked to the door and flung it open.
“You’re perfectly right, Bannister,” he said quietly. “Everything you have said is quite true. And now would you mind going?”
“I’ve not finished yet.”
“Yes, you have.”
Bailey hesitated. The first time frenzy had left him, and he was beginning to be a little ashamed of himself for having expressed his views in a manner which, though satisfying, was, he felt, less dignified than he could have wished.
He looked at Kirk, who was standing stiffly by the door. Something in his attitude decided Bailey to leave well alone. Such had been his indignation that it was only now that for the first time it struck him that his statement of opinion had not been made without considerable bodily danger to himself. Jarred nerves had stood him in the stead of courage; but now his nerves were soothed and he saw things clearly.
He choked down what he had intended to say and walked out. Kirk closed the door softly behind him and began to pace the studio floor as he had done on that night when Ruth had fought for her life in the room upstairs.