"Bah! I don't threaten." Seizing him by the arm, she swung him about, for she was a large woman and still in the fullest vigor of her womanhood. "Listen! You can't fool me. I know why you wrote this play. I know why you took that girl and made a star of her. I've known the truth all along."
"You have no cause to—"
"Don't lie!" she stormed at him. "I can read you like a book. But I won't stand for it." She flung his arm violently from her and turned away.
"I think you'd better go home," he told her. "You'll have the stage hands talking in a minute."
She laughed disagreeably, ignoring his words. "I watched you write this play! I have eyes, even if Irving Francis is blind. It's time he knew what is going on."
"There is nothing going on," Phillips cried, heatedly; but his wife merely shrugged her splendid shoulders and, opening her gold vanity case, gave her face a deft going over with a tiny powder puff. After a time the man continued: "I could understand your attitude if you—cared for me, but some years ago you took pains to undeceive me on that point."
Léontine's lip curled, and she made no answer.
"This play is a fine piece of property; it will bring us a great deal of money; it is the thing for which I have worked years."
"I am going to tell Francis the truth about you and his wife!" she said.
"But there's nothing to tell," the man insisted, with an effort to restrain himself. "Besides, you must know the result if you start a thing like that. He'll walk out and take his wife with him. That would ruin—"