"To save me?" Tempest's laugh was a queer little catch in the throat. "To save me!"
"She has broken up other men before she ever saw you, and she will keep on doing it. Once you're free of her and see her as other men see her"
"You mean as men like you have caused other men to see her!"
The white flame leapt out in Tempest's voice for an instant. Then it died. Dick breathed unevenly. Tempest said:
"What had she done to you?"
"I tell you she was spoiling your"
"That was my affair. What had the child done to you that you should do this to her?"
The ring of pain in the words turned Dick weak for a breath. This man was treading where he could never follow. The insult to himself; the cold brutality of deed and word; the reason which now seemed no more than impertinent interference—Tempest had passed them all by in his protecting thought for Andree.
"I have done nothing to her." Dick's voice was low. "One could not hurt her except physically."
For a little space Tempest was silent. But Dick felt the force gathering behind that silence. He looked at the photographs of Tempest's mother and sisters on the wall, and at the picture of Tempest's old home in Ontario where he had spent so many holidays in his boyhood.
"She loves you," said Tempest at last. "Won't you take that into account, and remember her needs?"
"Your own love has blinded you there, Tempest. She does not love me. She is incapable of love. And she does not matter. It is only you who matter."
"She loves you. And you have taken the guarding of her life out of my hands into your own. There is no god nor devil can make you anything but responsible for that. At the first I think she could have cared—but perhaps you were at work even then. What are you going to do about it now?"
Dick moistened his lips. Fury, such as was common to most men occasionally, which could expend itself in word
