For the moment the incomprehensible insult was more to him than
the coming danger to which his plans were put.
"You look at me as though I had committed a crime!" he exclaimed, in a
tone of injured protest.
"You have," Stafford answered steadily. "You have fooled me, playing
on my prejudices, and God knows what other weaknesses. I won't say
anything of that. I deserve my share of blame. But you have tricked
and deceived a woman. You have deceived an honorable man into a
dishonorable venture. You have brought disaster on your own country.
You are no more than a common adventurer. You are the parasite to whom
we owe all our misfortunes, and--"
"Stafford, take care!"
"Out of the way! I am going to put an end to it all!"
Travers flung the excited man back. Shame is a dangerous poison in the
blood of base natures. It is merely the precursor to a state of
absolute license where self-control, self-respect are flung to the
winds and the devil is set free to work his full, unchecked will.
Travers glared at Stafford, hating his upright bearing, his upright
indignation with a violence to which murder would have been the only
true expression.
"You are not going till I have your promise to hold your tongue!" he
said between his teeth.
Stafford flung the other's detaining hand from him. Freed from his
laming diseased conscience, and roused to activity, he acted like a
man of lightning determination and iron will.
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