Brooks came round like a pivot. The other man’s breath held at the look on his face. “I want your wife! Now for God’s sake throw me out, will you!”
It was quite still in the room. Even the words were spoken in something less than a whisper. When they had come there was no outward intimation that a man had pulled down a mountain crashing about his head.
Cleeburg’s hands clenched where they lay on the desk. He stared across it without changing position. The blood mounted to his wet forehead, then receded, leaving it gray white. His face was that of a man ready to kill. Then he shook his head a little vaguely, felt for the chair behind him, pulled it up to the desk. But he did not sink into it. He caught hold of the arm and stood so, steadying himself.
[208]
] “Nothing on God’s earth would have made me tell you, ’Dolph,” Brooks went on hoarsely. “I thought I could make you let me off without a word. But you can see for yourself—” He paused—then abruptly: “Do you know what it means to take her in my arms, loving her? Do you know what it means to want another man’s wife and feel her lips on yours every night?”
Cleeburg moistened his own. They opened and closed. His nails dug into the varnish of the chair. His eyes, so long unseeing, visualized in a flash the scene they had gazed upon so often—Gloria in the arms of the man facing him, himself urging them to more intense expression, more abandon of love. Like a raging animal the fighting male leaped up in him—then subsided, knowing it had to fight only itself. He met the straight look. In turn it met his. And he knew that set mouth had spoken truth, clean, uncompromising; could not have spoken at all if it had been otherwise. He groped uncertainly,—spoke at last half in fear, the first thought that had seized him.
“Does—does she—know?”
John Brooks looked into the tortured face and lied without hesitation.
“No.”
“You mean—she hasn’t even guessed?”
“No. And I don’t want her to.”