"Love!" he cried, disgustedly. "This sordid, sodden passion of yours love! Love lives only where there is sympathy, and respect, and mutual understanding. Do you mean to tell me that you have any respect for this woman? You know well you haven't a bit more respect for her than she has for you, and that's none. Do you mean to tell me there's any sympathy between you? No more than there is between a snake and a bird. And you aren't capable of understanding her any more than she is of understanding you. Love! It's lust! And you know it!"
Schuyler had dropped into a chair. Blake finished. He swung toward him.
"Go on!" he almost hissed, through clenched teeth. "Go on! If you can tell me anything that I haven't told myself, I'd like to hear it. Tell me what you think. Tell me what everyone thinks. Put into words the scorn and contempt that I see in every eye that looks into mine—in every mirror that I look into. Go on! Tell me something else! But let me tell you one thing! When Destiny can't get a man any other way, she sends a woman for him…. And the woman gets him."
Blake looked at him.
"'A fool there was';" he quoted. Schuyler interrupted.
"Stop!" he commanded. "Don't you suppose I know that thing by heart— every syllable—every letter of it? Don't you suppose I know what it means—all that it means—better than you can ever know?" He struck his forehead with clenched fist. "Tell me the things that lie here!" his voice was almost a scream. "The things that lie here, and burn, and burn, and burn! Tell me the things that lie here!" He struck his forehead again.
"I'll tell you this," said Blake, voice cold, and ringing. "It was written for you by a man who knew you; and you'll listen."
"No!" protested Schuyler. He started to rise from his chair. But Blake, catching him by the shoulders, thrust him back, holding him pinioned. "You fool," he remarked, bitterly. "You poor, pitiful, puling fool! 'Honor, and faith, and a sure intent'—a wife, a child, a reputation, a character. 'Stripped to his foolish hide,' the poem reads. But you're stripped to your naked, sodden skeleton. If I weren't so sorry for you, I could cut your throat. When I think of the little girl—calling you daddy—honoring you—loving you—and of what you've done for her! When I think of your wife—of the woman who went through the pains of childbirth for you—who held you sacred in that great, loving, glorious heart of hers—who gave, and gave, and gave asking only that there might be the more to give—You say that maybe I don't know what love is. Well, maybe I don't—and maybe I do. There are some things that a man may not tell his best friend—there are some things that a man may not even tell himself. But I'm different from you, thank God, and I love differently."
He moved back. Schuyler remained seated. Leaden eyes had in them now a new light—the light of suffering refined. Blake commanded:
"Stand up. Look me in the eye, as man to man—if you can."