"I have done her no wrong," said Paul, growing fiercer.
"I say, if you have wronged her, and would have it in your power to repair the injury, you must pass this night apart."
"Hugh!" cried Paul, in white rage, rising afresh to his feet, "you have tortured me and broken the heart of my mother; you have driven me from my home and from the world; you have thrust yourself between me and the woman who loves me, and now, when I am stripped of all else but that woman's love, and am going out to a strange land, a stranger and with empty hands, you would take her from me also and leave me naked!"
"I would save you from a terrible sin," said Hugh Ritson, once again.
"Out of my way!" cried Paul, in a thick voice, and he lifted his clinched fist.
Paul looked dangerous; his forehead contracted into painful lines; his quick breathing beat on Hugh's face.
"For the love of Heaven, get out of my way!"
But with awful strength and fury his fist fell at that moment, and Hugh Ritson was dashed to the ground.
In an instant Paul had lifted his foot to trample him, but he staggered back in horror at the impulse, his face ghastly white, his eyes red like the sun above snow. Then there was silence, and then Paul gasped in a flood of emotion:
"Come in, come in! will nobody come?" he cried.
The landlady was in the room at a stride. She had been standing, listening and quivering, behind the door.
In another moment Greta hurried down-stairs, and hastened to Paul's side.
Paul was leaning against the wall, his face buried in his hands.
"Take him away," he groaned, "before I rue the day that I saw him!"
And still Paul covered his eyes from the sight of what he had done and had been tempted to do.
"Ask your husband," he said, with emphasis, and an appalling calmness. "And remember this night. You shall never forget it!"
Hugh Ritson walked to the bare room opposite. The handle of the door did not turn in his hand. Drayton held it at the other side, and with head bent low he crouched there and listened.
"Who is it?" he whispered, when Hugh Ritson unlocked the door and pushed at it.
"Does he suspect?" whispered Drayton, when the door closed again. "Did he follow me? What are you going to do for a fellow? Damme, but I'll be enough for him!"