"Better tell us, Steve. Maybe we might help you."
The young man's head worked as if he were gulping at a hard lump; his lips moved without sound, his gaze leaped from place to place, lighting everywhere but on his father's waiting, watching eyes, and always coming back to the revolver with a loathing fascination. At last he spoke, in a whisper like the rasp of chafed husks:
"I had to do it. He deserved it."
The mother had not seen the nicks on the cartridges, but she needed no such evidence. She wailed:
"You don't mean that you—no—no—you didn't k-kill-ill-ill—"
The word rattled in her throat, and she went to the floor like a toppling bolster. It was the old man that lifted her face from the rug, ran to fetch water, and knelt to restore her. The son just wavered in his chair and kept saying:
"I had to do it. He was making her life a—"
"Her life?" the old man groaned, looking up where he knelt. "Then there's a woman in it?"
"Yes, it was for her. She's had a hard time. She's been horribly misunderstood. She may have been indiscreet—still she's a noble woman at heart. Her husband was a vile dog. He deserved it."
But the old man's head had dropped as if his neck were cracked. He saw what it all meant and would mean. He would have sprawled to the floor, but he caught sight of the pitiful face of his old love still white with the half-death of her swoon. He clenched his will with ferocity, resolving that he must not break, could not, would not break. He laid a hand on his son's knee and said, appealingly, in a low tone, as if he were the suppliant for mercy: