“I have no right.”
“Oh well, then!” She shrugged her shoulders.
“But,” he held stubbornly to his purpose, “whoever has a right to it—you
can’t print that letter.”
She laughed at him.
“You’ll see! You’ll see!”
“Yes,” he said, “I’ll see.”
They held each other’s eyes, angry, angry. I felt how Kent Rehan loathed
her. And she—yes, she must have hated him. She was all bitterness and
triumph and defiance. Yet all the time I was wanting to catch him by the
arm and say—‘Be kind to her. Say something kind and she’ll give in.’ I
knew it. He had only to say in that instant—‘Anita, I beg of you——’ and
she would have given him the letter. I knew it. I know it. I don’t know
how I knew it, but I was sure. But he was a man: of course he saw
nothing. He was very angry. He looked big and fine. I wondered that she
could stand outfacing him.
But she, for answer, picked up the letter, and affected to search
through it.
“Had I finished? Where was I? Ah, yes—‘An immortal spirit——’”
His hand came down heavily and swept the light table aside.
“You can’t do it. You shan’t do it. By God you shan’t.”
How it happened I couldn’t see. He was too quick. But at one moment she
held the letter, and in the next he had it, and was kneeling at the
grate, while she cried out—
“Kent!” And then—“Lila! Jasper! Stop him!”
Nobody could have stopped him. There was no flame, but the fire still
burned, a caked red and black lump, smouldering on cinders. He picked it
up—with his naked hands—thrust in the crumpled stiff paper, and smashed
it down again, so that the lump split, and still held it pressed down,
with naked hands, till the sheet had charred and shrivelled into
nothing. I suppose it all happened in a few seconds, but it seemed like
hours. I was in a train smash once: I wasn’t hurt; but I remember that I
came out of it with just the same sense of being battered and aged. This
scene I had only watched: I had not shared in it: I was still in the
little outer room. Yet I was shaken. I heard Mr. Flood call out—“Kent,
you crazy fool!” I heard Anita—“Let me _go_, Lila!” And then the women
were between me and him, and I could only see their backs, and there was
a babel of voices, and I found myself sitting like a fool, clutching at
the arms of my chair, and saying over and over again—“Oh, his hands, his
hands, his poor hands!” The tears were running down my cheeks.
But nobody noticed me. They were all too busy. The group had shifted a
little. The Baxter girl was edged out of it, and I watched her for a
moment as she sat down again, her cheeks flaming, her eyes as bright as
wet pebbles. She looked—it’s the only word—consumptive with excitement.
Every now and then she tried not to cough. I heard her saying—“It’s the
fog, it’s the awful fog!” defensively. But nobody listened. They were
all watching Anita.
Anita was dreadful. She was tremulous with anger. She was like a
pendulum with the check taken away. Her whole body shook. She couldn’t
finish her sentences. She talked to everyone at once.