"LILAS! Good God, are you crazy?" he burst forth.
"It was murder."
"Murder?"
"It was. You did it. You killed him." She had dropped her cigarette, and it burned a black scar into the rug at their feet. Hammon retreated a step, the girl followed with blazing eyes and words that were hot with hate. "You spilled that melted steel on him, and I saw it all. When I grew up I prayed for a chance to get even, for his sake and for the sake of the other hunkies you killed. You killed my mother, too, Jarvis Hammon, and made me a—a—You made me hustle my living in the streets, and go through hell to get it."
"Be quiet!" he commanded, roughly. "The thing's incredible—absurd.
You—the daughter of one of my workmen—and a JEW!"
"Yes. Levinski—Lily Levinski. And you wanted to marry me," she gibed.
"But I fooled you."
"I guess I—must be—out of my head. I never knew the man—there were thousands of them; accidents were common. But—you say—" He gathered his whirling thoughts, and, strangely enough, grew calm. "You say you prayed for a chance to get even—So, then, you've been humbugging—By God, I don't believe it!"
"It's true. It's true. It's true," shrilled the girl so hysterically that her voice roused Lorelei, sitting vacant-eyed in the room down the hall, and brought her to her feet with ears suddenly strained. Lorelei could hear only a part of the words that followed, but the tones of the two voices drew her from her retreat and toward the front of the apartment.
"I went through the gutter, I was a girl of the streets," Lilas was saying. "Oh, you're not the first—At last I got on the stage and then—you came. I knew you; I thought I'd die when you first touched me—then I figured it all out, and—you were easy."
"Go on," he said, hoarsely.