She forced a smile and nodded.
"Do you know what I've come for? For you."
She felt herself drawing together, shrinking away from him. "For me?"
she echoed vaguely.
"To marry you."
She was not looking at him; but she was seeing his face as it was when
swollen and distorted by drink. She answered hastily, "Oh, I couldn't
do that."
"Why not?"
"I can't marry till--till I'm independent. I've been making a lot of
plans. I'm going to work early next month."
"What nonsense!" he cried. "Courtney, do you realize you've not yet
said a single word of love? What is the matter? Is it our meeting in
this house?"
"Perhaps. I don't know. I don't understand it myself." Why was her
mind so perverse? Why did it thrust at her the things it was unjust to
remember, generous and necessary to forget? Why was she critical,
aloof, instead of responsive and generously glad? She went on: "It may
be the cold. My nose feels queer, and----"
"We must marry, right away," he insisted, frowning upon her lack of
seriousness. "We've been separated too long already."
That seemed to her to explain. But it did not remove. She said, "Not
until I'm independent."
"But that means years--years!"
"Oh, no," protested she. "Not the kind of independence _I_ mean. I
simply want to be sure I could earn my living if it were necessary."
"But it isn't necessary. And life is so short, dearest. And at most
we'll have few enough years of happiness."
"I know," said she, surprised that these truths did not move her in the
least, nor his looks, his tones, so charged with entreaty she such a
short time ago would have found irresistible. "But I've thought it out,
and I realize everything depends on my getting that feeling of
independence. I'll not risk again what I've been through."
"You know very well, that couldn't happen. As for your working, why,
dear, unless a woman's been bred to making a living, it's almost
impossible for her."
"Nevertheless I must try."
"If you loved me, you'd not talk like this," cried he, bitterly.
Instead of protesting, she became thoughtful. "Do you really think so?"
she asked. "I wonder if that's true."
"Certainly not," retreated he, alarmed. "We love each other. But your
way of acting and talking has upset me. I ought not have come here. We
should have met over at Tippecanoe."
"You don't seem to see my point of view, Basil."
"I do, but it's a mere notion. A very fine notion," he hastened to add,
though he could not make his tone other than grudging, "but foolish."
"It was my dependence that put me in such a frightful position with
Richard. And----"
"Courtney," he interrupted, between anger and appeal, "please don't
repeat that comparison of what you were to him and what you and I are to
each other. It--hurts me, and it's not fair."
"Would you promise to love me always just as you do now?"
"I certainly would. I shall."
She lowered her eyes. Her heart sank.
"Wouldn't you?" he asked.
"No," replied she. "How can I--or anyone--honestly say how he or she'll
feel about a person they don't know through and through--a month
ahead--let alone a year--ten years--twenty? You know that's true,
Basil. You're not honest with yourself--or with me."
He was silent, was watching her with sullen, suspicious eyes.
"It seems to me," she went on, "that love--real love--ought to make you
careful. If we were a boy and a girl, without experience or
intelligence or anything but hazy, rosy emotions----"
"You and I never will agree about love," he interrupted, impatiently.
"But that's a small matter. The only point is that we love each other.
Love's like a rose, Courtney. Tear it apart to see what it's made of
and you lose the rose and have only withered petals."
"Yes--one kind of love. But is it the kind to build one's life upon?"
"I'm not going to argue with you. Have your way, if you will. You'll
soon get enough of work--of this fantastic idea of independence, as you
call it. As if I'd not be too afraid of losing your love not to respect
your rights and consider you always and in every way."
"But suppose _I_ ceased to love _you_--and were dependent on you----"
"I know. I know. Don't let's argue it. Go on with your plans. The
sooner you begin, the sooner you'll see how foolish you are. You don't
appreciate what work means--especially for a woman--the toil, the
humiliations, the downright miseries--that cost youth and looks and
health."
It still further depressed her to see how swiftly his words depressed
her--how appalling was the lift and spread of the mountain she had been
dreaming of removing with one shovel and one pair of feeble hands.
"Instead of discouraging me," cried she with some anger in her reproach,
"you ought to be encouraging me. I should think you'd be afraid to have
a woman about who might be your wife for the sake of a living--might be
making a hypocrite of herself and a fool of you."
He winced; she saw he was thinking of Richard. "That could never happen
with _us_!" cried he.
"Never is a long time."
He was squirming in irritation and impatience--and was obviously afraid
she would suspect the thoughts he yet could not conceal. "Please don't
insist on discussing this, Courtney. Go ahead. Try your scheme. Work!
I never heard of a woman at work who wouldn't do almost anything to
escape."
She forced a laugh. "Then if I fail and send for you, you'll know what
it means--and fly in the other direction."
"Not I," replied he with an overenergy that failed in its purpose of
hiding the discomfort her suggestion had caused him. "I tell you, we
love each other. That makes everything different." He laughed. "Work!
Thank God, you and I don't have to work. We can love."
She sat with eyes down and fingers idly matching the corners of her
little handkerchief. What a difference between work as a dream and work
in the doing!--between imagining the glories of self-respecting
independence and making the coarse, cruel struggle step by step up to
those glories--between work as a pastime and work as a necessity. How
unpractical she had been! She sighed. "I wish," said she, "I'd never
realized that to be secure a woman must be independent. But--now that
I've realized it, I've got to go on."
He put on an expression of pretended deep and respectful interest that
made it hard for her to hide her amusement. "What are your plans?" he
asked.
"I'll tell you sometime. I don't feel in the humor now."
"Something vague--eh?" And she saw that he assumed she was only
pretending, after all. A superior man-to-woman smile had replaced his
look of nervousness.
She waited until he had got himself comfortably settled down into this
agreeable assumption, then said tranquilly, "No. I have the place
promised me."
He rose impatiently. If she had needed proof as to his real opinion of
women--his conviction of their inferiority, his expression would have
given it. Yes, his opinion was the same as Richard's--always had been,
as she could now see, recalling remarks he had made from time to time.
The same prejudices as Richard; only, Basil had been less
courageous--less honest. Those prejudices irritated her in Richard; in
Basil they seemed laughable. But he was getting his impatience and
scorn, his exasperation against her poor womanish folly somewhat under
control. "Now, Courtney, can't you realize--" he began in a
teacher-to-infant tone. Then, a new thought struck him. He broke off
abruptly. "No--go ahead. It's just as well you should have the
lesson," said he.
"Should learn how dependent I am on--some man?"
"How unfitted you are to be anything but a lady."
"I know that already," replied she forlornly. "Or, rather, I'm not
fitted to be either dependent or independent."
"Then why not be sensible, and marry me at once?"
She did not answer. She could not tell him the truth; she would not
tell him a lie. Anyhow, she wasn't sure what she did think.
"You will--won't you, dear? You'll not waste time that we might give to
love and happiness?" And he anxiously watched her face--with its sweet
feminineness that gave him hope, its mystery and its resoluteness that
made him uneasy.
"It's a temptation," she said, absently. She saw herself trying for
independence and failing--losing heart, self-respect--growing cynical
through hardship--marrying Basil to escape-- Just there, she suddenly
surprised her elusive real self, saw deep into the inmost workings of
her own mind--saw that she did not care for Basil Gallatin--that she had
really been pretending to herself that she loved him because he was the
alternative, the refuge, should her try for independence fail!
"I'll tell you what let's do," she heard him saying. "Let's get married.
Then you can take that place, whatever it is. With your future secure
no matter what happened, you'd work better and would be much more likely
to succeed."
The appeal of this subtle proposal awakened her to her peril. It must
be now or never; she must speak the truth now, or lose the courage and
the strength to speak it. "Basil," she said abruptly, "I don't love
you."
He stared.
"I've been lying to myself and to you. I don't love you."
"That's not true!"
"I never did love you," she replied--for, with the one truth out, the
other forged to the front and made its amazing self visible. "No--I
never did love you." How plain it all was, now! How strange that she
should for even an infatuated moment have believed this was the man she
needed, the man who needed her--not words alone, and kisses and thrills,
but real need--for mind and heart and body--all that the three have to
give and long to give and to receive.
He stood before her, looking down in graciously smiling remonstrance.
"That's a little too much," he said tenderly. "You can't have forgotten
all we've been to each other--those hours of happiness--those moments of
ecstasy--my love--my Courtney----"
There was color in her cheeks, an answering tenderness in the eyes that
lifted to his. "No, I've not forgotten. And as I had to learn and as
there's no other way for woman or man to learn but experience, I don't
regret. But we were both in love with love--not with each other. And
what's more, we never could be." Now that she had flung away pretense,
its veil of illusion over her sight dropped; she was seeing him as she
looked at him--not his qualities that repelled, not his qualities that
attracted, but the whole man--was seeing him as we see only those toward
whom are amiably indifferent. She was thinking, "What a nice, well-bred
man he is, but how small." Not bad, not grossly sensual, not mean--not
at all mean, but the reverse. Just small.
He began to recover from the stupefaction of the convincing tones of her
denial of love. He was hastily donning the costume of pose that is
correct for such occasions. She beamed genially upon him and said, "Now,
don't work yourself up, my dear Basil. Sit down over there, and let's
talk quite quietly--and naturally."
It is impossible for anyone with any sense of humor whatever to indulge
alone in paroxysms of emotion before a tranquil spectator. Basil
stopped rolling his eyes and dilating his nostrils, and seated himself,
in no very good humor. Her tone was not pleasant. It would have been
perfectly proper for a man to use to a woman. It was impertinent, in
weaker sex to stronger. "Oh, I'm all right," said he, crossly, as he
seated himself. "But you'd better look out about those ideas of yours.
They have a terribly unfeminizing effect on women."
"Yes--I guess they do," replied she. A puzzling, alluring combination
of seriousness and humor she looked as she sat there opposite him, her
elbows on the arms of the chair, her chin resting upon the backs of her
linked fingers, her eyes fixed gravely yet somehow quizzically upon him.
"Have you ever thought of our life together?" asked she. "Of what we'd
do--between times?"
"Between times?"
"No one--not even the most ardent lovers--can make love all the time.
There haven't been any 'between times' in our life heretofore, because
of the circumstances. But when we were together without
interruption--with no excitement or interest of danger--with no
stimulus--with just ourselves--what would we do 'between times'?--and
there'd be more and more 'between times' as we got used to each other."
This uninviting but obviously truthful picture sobered and exasperated
him. "Haven't thought about it," he confessed. "I haven't gone into
details. But I know we'll be happy. You'll step into the position you
are entitled to and I can see that you get."
"The social position, you mean?"
"Certainly. And we'll enjoy ourselves."
He could not possibly have said anything that would have shown more
clearly the width and depth of the gap between them--how little he
understood her, how little they had in common.
"You'll be tremendously popular," he said with enthusiasm.
She shook her head slowly. "I don't think _I_ could be happy, wasting
my life, scattering myself among a lot of inane pastimes." She laughed
a little. "You'd be horribly disappointed in me, Basil."
"I'll risk it. They'll be crazy about you in the East." He nodded
proud, confident, self-complacent encouragement. "I'll risk it!"
She met his look with a quiet final "But I'll not." In another mood his
proposal, his manner, his very poor sort of pride in her would have
amused her. But as she listened, she remembered all she had believed
about this man, all her idealizing of his mind and character. And she
grew sad and sick. This small man!
He planted himself firmly before her. "Now, look here, Courtney. It's
useless for you to talk that sort of thing. You don't mean it. And I'm
not going to give you up. You're my wife, Courtney. The only possible
excuse for what you did was that you loved me."
"On the contrary," replied she, "my only excuse is that I was swept away
by my craving for love--for what Richard in our brief honeymoon had
taught me to need----"
"For God's sake!" he cried. "How _can_ you say such things?"
"Because they are the truth," she answered with quiet dignity; and he
felt ashamed of himself without knowing why. "Basil, you don't love me
as I really am. You find me shocking. And I don't love you as you
really are. I find you--" She hesitated.
"Go on. Say it."
But what would be the use? The truth, all of it, any literal part of it
would only hurt him, would not awaken him. By birth and by breeding and
by the impassable limitations of his mind he was incapable of learning
or appreciating the truth, was wedded forever to the morality that makes
truth a vice and lies a virtue. So, she evaded. "I find you are like
your dress," answered she, her eyes and her light tone taking the sharp
sting off her words. "A charming style of your own but strictly
conventional withal."
He did not fully appreciate this faint hint of the truth, but he
understood enough to be irritated. "You've been doing too much of what
you women call thinking. And you've become like all women who try to
think."
"All women think," said she. "But very few of them tell the man what
they think--until they've got him safely married. You ought to thank me
for being candid in advance."
He scowled at her smile. "I'm not going to give you up," he said
sullenly. "I know you better than you know yourself. You'll come out
of this mood. And--dearest--remember that, in spite of your disdain, the
old-fashioned woman--tender, simple, loving--is far sweeter than these
thinkers--gets more pleasure--gives more."
"A baby's sweeter than a grown person," replied she, refusing to be
serious. "But, Basil, the time has about passed when even a woman can
stay on a baby--though most of the men and women pretend it isn't so,
and a good many of them--like you and Helen--get angry if the truth's
forced on you. At any rate, _I_ can't be a baby anymore.... Do you
know what would happen if I married you?"
The look that accompanied her abrupt question was so penetrating, so
significant that he paled. "I don't want to hear any more of your
truths that aren't true at all," he cried.
"I see you know what would happen. The same thing again."
"Courtney!--Good God!"
"The same thing again. As long as my craving for real companionship was
unsatisfied, I couldn't be content. The same delusion that made me fancy
I loved you would trap me again--or, perhaps it wouldn't be delusion but
really the man I needed--the man who needed me. A mirage isn't a
delusion, you know. It's an actuality that we mislocate. I'd hunt
on--and on--through the desert for my oasis--until I found it."
He had not taken his fascinated gaze from her dreamy face, her eyes of
unfathomable emerald. "Do you mean that?" he said huskily. "No--you
can't. But you must not say those things, Courtney--you really mustn't.
You'll make me afraid of you. As it is, I fear I'll have a hard time
making myself forget."
"I don't want you to forget. And I've told you the exact truth because
I want you to realize how unsuited we are to each other."
He walked up and down in violent agitation. "I don't understand it," he
muttered. "Has some one--Courtney, do you love some other man?"
"I do not. I've seen no one practically but Richard."
He halted with a jerk. "Richard!" His eyes narrowed with jealous
suspicion. "Has he been trying to win you back?"
She smiled at the idea, so at variance with the facts. "He treats me
like another man."
"Then you see him?"
"Every day. I work at the laboratory with him."
"_What!_" Basil stared, dropped to the nearest chair dumfounded.
"Why not? ... Don't be so pitifully conventional, Basil. This is the
twentieth century, not the Dark Ages. He knows you're here now--asked me
to see you here rather than where it might cause gossip."
As he recovered, his mind, seen clearly in his features, slowly took
fire. "And you pretended you were telling me the truth!" he cried,
starting up. Everything else--doubt of her--doubt of himself--all was
forgotten in the torrent rush of jealousy. "And I, poor fool, believed
you! But I'll tell you what the truth is. You've lost your nerve. You
love me as you did. But you haven't the courage to break off here. And
you're sinking back to what you were when I found you. I might have
known! A woman always belongs to the nearest man." He was raging up
and down the room. "I've come for you. I'll not go without you. You're
mine--not his. I'll show you! I'll show you!" And he snatched his hat
from the sofa and rushed out.
For the moment motion was beyond her power. She saw him dart along the
veranda, past the windows, take the path to the Smoke House. Terror
galvanized her. She flew to the private telephone, rang long and
vigorously, put the receiver to her ear. A pause; she was about to ring
again when Richard's voice came: "Yes--what is it?"
"He's coming to you, Richard," she gasped. "I angered him. He's wild
with rage. Promise you won't let him in."
"I can't do that." Richard's voice was calm and natural.
"Your promise to me!"
"Don't be alarmed. He doesn't amount to much, if you'll pardon my
saying so."
"I'm coming as quickly as I can. Don't see him, Richard. Remember
Winchie!"
"Come if you like. But I suspect you'll only aggravate him. Believe
me, I can take care of him. Here he is now----"
She dropped the receiver, ran out of the house and along the path.
*XXIX*
As Vaughan hung up the receiver and turned, Gallatin flung open the door
on which he had just rapped a loud challenge. He scowled at Vaughan;
Vaughan eyed him with the expression that simply looks and waits. It
was evident Basil expected immediate combat, was ready for it--therefore
altogether unready for the form of encounter less easy. Dick's
tranquillity completely disconcerted him. He advanced a step, with an
aggressive, "Well, here I am."
"So I see," replied Dick.
"You've been thinking it was cowardice that made me go away. But it
wasn't. And I've come to face it out with you. You had your chance for
her. You lost her. I purpose to keep her."
"Very well," said Dick. "She's free. Her affairs are none of my
business." And he sat down at the long table under the windows, glanced
at the electric furnace as if about to resume work.
"But she isn't free!" cried Gallatin. "You've not freed her, though she
has the right to it. You're holding on to her through the boy."
Dick bent over the white crystals in the platinum tray on the shelf of
the furnace.
Gallatin, exasperated, waved his fists. "I demand that you free her!
If she were free, she'd come with me, for she loves me."
Dick took a metal rod from the case and began pushing the crystals this
way and that carefully.
"She loves me, I tell you!"
Without pausing or looking round Dick said: "If you say that again--I'll
begin to believe it isn't so. There's no accounting for
tastes--especially for tastes feminine. But--" He did not finish; over
his face drifted a slight smile more eloquent against Basil's
deficiencies than the fiercest stream of epithet.
"I've won her," taunted Gallatin, in wild fury, yet as if restrained by
an invisible leash. "I've got her heart. You might as well release the
rest." As Dick seemed now quite absorbed and unconscious of his
presence, he advanced still nearer. "By God, you shall!" he cried.
"She belongs to me, and I'm here to maintain my rights at any cost."
Vaughan laid down the long rod with a gesture of deliberate precision
and care, turned slowly toward him. His long handsome face was of a
curious transparent pallor. His rather deep-set gray-blue eyes looked
coldly and cruelly at his one-time guest and partner. "You evidently
don't understand," said he. "There are times when one must either
ignore--or kill."
Basil sneered, "Well?" said he, with intent to draw on.
"I have been choosing to ignore. At first it would have given me the
greatest pleasure to kill you. Now--you are to me much like the cur
that barks and snaps at passers by." He rose. "You've come here to try
to make a vulgar scandal. You'll not succeed. You have nothing to
lose. I can't give you your deserts without hurting my son. So--"
Dick paused, seemed to be reflecting.
"You hide behind him--do you?" sneered Basil. In his frenzy he felt
that one or the other must die then and there or he himself would be
forever dishonored.
Dick apparently had not heard. In an abstracted way he said, to
himself, not to Gallatin, "Yes, I think that will do." Again there was
a pause, he thinking, Gallatin held silent and expectant by his
expression. Suddenly Dick said sharply, "Yes--that will do." He moved
the ladder to the south wall, mounted; he took from the high top shelf a
jar of heavy glass, about one third full of dark red powder; he
descended with it. "Close that door and lock it," he ordered.
Basil, from habit of association with him as assistant, moved to obey.
Hand on knob and about to swing the door, he hesitated, turned. "What
are you going to do?" he demanded.
"When you lock that door," replied Dick, "I shall empty what's in this
jar into the bowl of water there, and in a few seconds we shall both be
dead."
Basil shrank; a shudder ran visibly over his frame.
"I could kill you without killing myself," continued Dick, "and cover
the scandal with the pretense of accident. It would serve you right,
but--somehow it strikes me as cowardly. So--lock the door."
Basil was no coward; but he had grown yellow with fear. His hand now
dropped nervously from the knob.
"Lock the door," said Dick sharply. "There's no time to lose. I think
she's on the way here."
"She'll understand--and kill herself."
"Why not? Helen will take care of Winchie."
Basil's gaze wandered round, in search of another excuse. He braced
himself, cried defiantly, "I refuse!"
"Very well." Dick set the jar on the table. "Then go."
"You think I'm a coward. But it's not that."
Dick shrugged his shoulders. "I know you're a coward. Everyone is. I'm
as well pleased that you don't accept. I've no wish to die,
particularly for such an absurd, stagy notion of honor. But I will not
have a scandal----"
Just there Courtney dashed in, her expression so disheveled that it gave
her the air of being disheveled in dress. Her glance darted from
Richard leaning calmly against the table and, in blouse and cap, looking
like a handsome workingman, to Basil in his fashionable English tweeds,
standing shamefaced and irresolute near the door--so near that she had
brushed him as she entered. On Basil her gaze rested like a withering
blight. Her eyes flashed green fire; her every feature hurled at him
the scorn that despises. "You shabby coward!" she said, her voice low
and threatening to break under the weight of its burden of fury. "You
who come here and try to ruin my child and me for your vanity!"
"Courtney!" he pleaded, not daring to lift his eyes. "I love you. I
cannot give you up."
"Love! You don't know what it means! You weak vain thing! You found
you couldn't have me on equal terms. So you thought you'd degrade
me--compel me." She turned on Richard. "And you, too!" she blazed. "If
you were a man you'd kill him--you'd kill us both--with some of your
chemicals there--and protect Winchie by saying it was an accident."
"Absurd," said Vaughan with an indifferent shrug. His arms were folded
upon his broad chest.
Trembling and blazing, she went up to him. "Look at me!" she cried, her
hands on her surging bosom, her eyes glittering insanely up at him.
Every instinct of prudence, the instinct of self-preservation itself had
succumbed under the surge of elemental passion, of frenzied shame that
she should have lowered herself to such a man as this Basil Gallatin.
"This body of mine," she said in a voice of terrible calm, "it's been
his--that thing's--do you hear? He has had me in his arms--me--your
wife--the mother of your boy--he--that creature quaking there. And I
have kissed him and caressed him and trembled with passion for him as I
never did for you.... Now, will you kill us?"
He did not move. But slowly the veins and muscles of his face
tightened, pushed up against, strained against the ghastly whiteness of
his skin. And slowly his eyes lighted with the fires of a demoniac fury
that made hers seem like a child's weak hysteria. She gazed at him,
fascinated. Then, with a gasp, she braced herself and waited for the
frightful death that look of his signaled. But she did not flinch, nor
shift her gaze from his. To Gallatin, paralyzed, watching them with
eyes starting and lips ajar, it seemed an eternity while they stood thus
facing each other in silence. Then, as slowly as that expression on
Richard's face had come it departed, like a fiend fighting inch by inch
against being flung back into the hell from which it had issued at the
call of her dreadful taunts. The face remained deathly white; but those
were Richard Vaughan's own eyes that gazed down at the small, delicate
face of the woman, in them a look that filled her with awe, made her
ashamed, gave her the impulse to sink down at his feet and burst into
tears.
"No, Courtney," Richard said, infinite gentleness in his tone. "I'm
neither god nor devil. I--all three of us--will do to-day what
to-morrow we'll be glad we did. One can always die. But living again,
once one's dead--that's not so simple."
There fell silence. She stood before him, bosom still heaving but eyes
down. Vaughan turned to Gallatin with a courtly politeness like his
grandfather's. "Don't you think you'd better go--for the present at
least?"
Gallatin, who had been awed also, hesitated. He looked at Courtney; his
jaws clenched and he fixed sullen, devouring eyes on her. "I want to
talk to her alone," said he aggressively.
"That's for her to decide," said Richard.
Courtney lifted her head to refuse. Then it occurred to her that, by
talking with Basil, she might settle the whole business for good and
all. With a curious deference she looked inquiringly at Richard. He
shrugged his shoulders, began pushing the tray into the furnace. She
let her eyes rest on Basil, said "Yes--that's best. Come on." She went
out of the laboratory, Basil following her. Richard closed the door
behind them. At the edge of the clearing she halted, wheeled upon him.
"Well!" she began, her voice as merciless as her eyes.
He was a pitiful spectacle. His feature were working in a ferment of
many unattractive emotions--jealousy, pique, fear that he was
ridiculous, wounded vanity, desire to regain with her the ground he felt
he must have lost. "You see now, Courtney," he said, aggressive yet
pleading, too, "he doesn't care a rap about you."
"Well?" she repeated. Her tone was much softer; her nerves were
calming, and her temper was yielding to her sense of proportions. Also,
the man looked weak and shallow and ridiculous--not worth the while of a
great emotion. Just small. "What of it?" she asked.
He scowled in angry embarrassment at her expression which neither
suggested nor encouraged tragedy. "I never heard of people acting as
we've acted to-day!" he cried.
"But no doubt they often do," replied she. "Everybody doesn't act--all
the time--as if he were in a novel or a play, or thought he was."
"You can respect him after this?"
Her eyes had the expression a man least likes to see in a woman's when
she is looking at him. "Don't you?" said she.
He reddened, and his eyes shifted. Presently he said humbly, "I--I am
sorry for what I did. I was crazy with jealousy. I'm not myself--not
at all."
She felt the truth of this at once. "And I'm sorry for the things I
said to you and to him. I was crazy with rage."