"She came across an ocean and two continents to tell you that she was true to you, damn you! And she has just cried herself to sleep! I want the truth, do you hear!" His boyish face was convulsed with passion and his whole effeminate body was aquiver.
"I've lost her!" repeated Douglass, unemotionally, offering not the slightest resistance to the other's vehemence. "I've lost her!" as though that were the Alpha and Omega of all things. Then he turned fiercely to the younger man.
The boy blazed back at him as fiercely, fumbling the weapon in his pocket.
"I want the whole truth of this miserable thing--the whole truth! And if you have made my sister suffer through anything unworthy, I want your heart's blood as well! Damn you, are you going to speak?" He clutched frantically at Douglass's throat. Very calmly the bronzed giant circled his wrists with a grip of steel and held him off at arms' length.
"Sit down, Carter," he said in a normal tone. "It is your right to know and you shall. I have wronged your sister! No, you fool, not in that way!" as the boy struggled furiously in his vice-like grip. "But I am deserving of any punishment you may choose to inflict." And without preamble he told Carter the whole story, only suppressing the name of the woman concerned.
At its conclusion the boy breathed easier and the truculence went out of him entirely as Douglass laid his head on his arms and muttered hoarsely:
"I love her! I love her! And now I've lost her!"
Bobbie Carter rose and put his hand on the brawny shoulder. His voice was harsh with sympathy, after the fashion of man.
"You've been all kinds of a senseless ass, Ken," he said, affectionately, his faith in his hero once more restored, "but it is not as bad as I thought. You want to break off with Mrs.--" he had almost betrayed his knowledge of that which Douglass had been chivalrously trying to conceal--"with that woman, whoever she is, and in course of time, after she has bawled her foolish little eyes out, Gracie will forgive you. I know her like a book. I'm her brother, you know! Buck up, old man! She'll make it hard for you, and you are going to get a bitter lesson. But it will come out all right in time--If you don't go loco again and spoil it all."