The Last Woman

Morton's face went white as death at these words, and his eyes blazed with the fury of a wild animal that is being whipped while it is chained down so that it cannot show resentment. He did not speak; he made no effort to interrupt. Gardner continued: "When Miss Langdon arrived here alone, in your roadster, she gave us no explanation whatever of what had happened, and, while we believed that some unpleasant incident must have occurred, we did not press her for the story of it. Then, you came, and without mincing your words you told the whole brutal truth; and you uttered it with a spirit of brutality and bravado that would be unbelievable under any other circumstances. And when, in your own self-abasement for what you had done, you confessed to the acts of which you were guilty toward Miss Langdon, you received, at Duncan's hands, the blow you so thoroughly merited; I am frank to say to you that, if he had held his hand one instant longer, it would have been my fist, instead of his, that floored you. But that is not all. You have been a gun-fighter for so many years, out there in your own wild country, that, before you were fairly down after you received the blow, you must needs pull your artillery, and use it. Do you realize, I wonder, how near to committing a murder you have been, to-night? If Miss Brunswick had not seen your act, if she had not started forward and thrown herself between your weapon and its intended victim, thus frightening you so that you sought at the last instant to withhold your fire, I tremble for what the consequences might have been. As it happened, no one has been harmed. You deflected your aim just in time to avoid a tragedy; but it is not your fault that somebody does not carry a serious wound as the consequence of your brutality. Were it not for Miss Brunswick's act, there would be a dead man at this feast, and you would be his murderer. But even that, horrible as it might have been, is less a crime than the other one you have confessed. You, reared in an atmosphere where all men infinitely respect woman-kind, deliberately outrage every finer feeling of the one woman you have professed to love. That, Richard Morton, is very nearly all that I have to say to you. I have asked these gentlemen to come into the room, and to be present during this scene, in order that we may all bind ourselves to secrecy concerning what has happened to-night. I can assure you that nothing of this affair will leak out to others. I have quite finished now. One of the servants will bring your roadster around to the door. Our acquaintance ends here."