Genevieve leaned toward him, half frenzied, her face crimson and her gentle eyes ablaze with scorn. "And you—you!—claiming to be sober—come in here and say that to me!—that you've deliberately sought to intoxicate yourself in my house—in my house! You haven't even the decency to go away to do it! You must flaunt your shame in my face!"
"I told you I meant to slip out unseen," he mumbled, for the moment weakening in his determination to vilify himself. "Didn't think you'd give me the gaff—when it was all for you."
"For me!" she cried, in a storm of hysteria—"for me! Oh! To destroy all my love for you—my trust in the courage, the strength, the heroism I thought was yours! Oh! And to prove yourself a brute, a mere brute!—here in my own house!—my guest! Oh! oh! I hate you! I hate you!"
She flung herself, gasping and quivering, into her chair, in a desperate effort to regain self-control.
Blake bent over her and murmured with profound tenderness: "There, there, little girl! Don't take on so! I ought to 've cleared out right at first—that's a fact. But I didn't mean to bother you. Just blundered in. But I'm glad to know you've found out the truth. Long's you know for sure that you hate me, 't won't take you long to feel right toward him. He's all I'm not. Mighty glad you're going to be happy. Good-bye!"
Genevieve had become very still. But she neither looked up at him nor spoke when he stopped. He turned steadily about and started toward the door of the cardroom. Lord James thrust back the heavy chair and sprang to place himself before his friend.
"Wait, Tom!" he demanded. "Can't you see? She's overcome. Good God! You can't go off this way! You must wait and tell her the truth—how it happened—why you did it!"
Blake looked at him quietly and spoke in a tone of gentle warning, as one speaks to a young child: "Now, now, Jimmy boy, get out of my way. Don't pester me. Just think how easily I could smash you—and I'm not so far from it. Stand clear, now."
"No! In justice to yourself—to her!"
"That's all settled. Let me by."