Page:Glitter (1926).pdf/195

If you hadn't kept at him and kept at him about money till he didn't know what he was doing, he'd be alive this minute——"

"Oh!" gasped Eunice.

"—and you've got the colossal gall to sit there and talk about how you've got to suffer for him! And to say it's better that people should think you're no good than that he wasn't! You're damn right, it's better!—because it's truer! He was one of the best men that ever lived, and you—parasite—if he turned out to be anything else toward the end, you were responsible! No, you shouldn't tell anybody he was bootlegging. You were right about that. If he'd been anybody but Brad it wouldn't matter so much, but Brad—whom everybody loved and respected—who never did an underhanded thing in his life until you got hold of him—no, neither you nor I can ever tell on him. But don't try to make out you've got altruistic motives for keeping your mouth shut! I don't know what your motives are, I don't pretend to, but I know whatever they are they're selfish—like everything else about you——"

He desisted as suddenly as though he had been grappled from behind and bound and gagged. His eyes had fallen on a photograph of Brad, framed in polychrome on a little table. He fancied that the picture was reproaching him; that it looked sorrowful, cut to the heart, and that its frozen lips were whispering, "Jock! Jock! Don't . . ." He stole a look at Eunice and saw that she cringed like a flogged child, hiding her face against her bare round arm that lay along the back of the divan and clawed blindly at threads with its fingers. He thought how Brad would hate to see her so, and a great shame took hold on him. Not because he had hurt Eunice; Eunice