An instant he paused, then unclenched his hand and fell to straightening his collar and rubbing his stinging flesh. Sheila had run between the two men in a panic. All her thought was to protect her husband. Her eyes blazed against Eldon. He saw the look, and it hurt him worse than his other shame. He laughed bitterly into Bret’s face.
“We’re even now. I struck you when you didn’t expect it because you didn’t belong on the stage. You don’t belong here now. Get off! Get off or—God help you!”
This challenge infuriated Bret, and he made such violent effort to reach Eldon that Batterson, Prior, McNish, and an intensely interested and hopeful group of stage-hands could hardly smother his struggles. He bent and wrestled like the withed Samson, and his hatred for Eldon could find no word bitter enough but “You—you—you actor!”
Eldon laughed at this taunt and answered with equal contempt, “You thug—you business man!” Then, seeing how Sheila urged Bret away, how dismayed and frantic she was, he cried in Bret’s face: “You thought you struck me—but it was your wife you struck in the face!”
Sheila did not thank him for that pity. She silenced him with a glare, then turned again to her husband, put her arms about his arms, and clung to them with little fetters that he could not break for fear of hurting her. She laid her head on his breast and talked to his battling heart:
“Oh, Bret, Bret! honey, my love! Don’t, don’t! I can’t bear it! You’ll kill me if you fight any more!”
The fights of men and dogs are almost never carried to a finish. One surrenders or runs or a crowd interferes.
Winfield felt all his strength leave him. His wife’s voice softened him; the triumph of his registered blow satisfied him to a surprising degree; the conspicuousness of his position disgusted him. He nodded his head and his captors let him go.
The reaction and the exhaustion of wrath weakened him so that he could hardly stand, and Sheila supported him almost as much as he supported her.