“Well?” This was hurting him; but he met it. “And there's no likelihood that you've told her all of it. Were you such a fool as to think you could keep it all secret? Out here on the coast—and from a woman with as many underground connections as I have?”
“There's nothing that!—”
“Listen! I'm not through with you. You've been a very, very rough proposition. I know all about it. No—wait! There's something else. I knew all about you when you were making up to me on the steamer. I could have trapped you then—tangled your life so with mine that you could never have got away from me, never in the world. But I didn't. I liked you, and I didn't want to hurt you—then.”
“You do want to hurt me now?”
“It may be necessary.”
“Since you're taking this position”—he was finding difficulty in making his voice heard; there seemed to be danger of explosive sounds—“probably I'd better just go to Mr. Doane myself with these things.”
“If you do that I'll wreck your life.”
“You don't mean that you'd—”
“You seem to be forgetting a good deal.”
“But you—”