"But did you?" he almost shrieked, the blood cording and bulging red, as if about to burst the veins of temples and neck.
"Yes, I did," she flashed. There was primitive woman uppermost in her now, and a spirit no man might provoke with impunity.
"You love him?" he asked, very low, incredulously, with almost insane eagerness for denial in his query.
Then Wade saw the glory of her--saw her mother again in that proud, fierce uplift of face, that flamed red and then blazed white--saw hate and passion and love in all their primal nakedness.
"Love him! Love Wilson Moore? Yes, you fool! I love him! Yes! Yes! YES!"
That voice would have pierced the heart of a wooden image, so Wade thought, as all his strung nerves quivered and thrilled.
Belllounds uttered a low cry of realization, and all his instinctive energy seemed on the verge of collapse. He grew limp, he sagged, he tottered. His sensorial perceptions seemed momentarily blunted.
Wade divined the tragedy, and a pang of great compassion overcame him. Whatever Jack Belllounds was in character, he had inherited his father's power to love, and he was human. Wade felt the death in that stricken soul, and it was the last flash of pity he ever had for Jack Belllounds.
"You--you--" muttered Belllounds, raising a hand that gathered speed and strength in the action. The moment of a great blow had passed, like a storm-blast through a leafless tree. Now the thousand devils of his nature leaped into ascendancy. "You!--" He could not articulate. Dark and terrible became his energy. It was like a resistless current forced through leaping thought and leaping muscle.
He struck her on the mouth, a cruel blow that would have felled her but for Wade: and then he lunged away, bowed and trembling, yet with fierce, instinctive motion, as if driven to run with the spirit of his rage.