A momentary flush of irritation--momentary, and no more--passed over Allan's face. "You mightn't think her quite so helpless," he said, "if you knew the truth."
"Are you the man to tell me the truth?" retorted the other. "You who have refused to hear her in her own defense! You who have closed the doors of this house against her!"
Allan still controlled himself, but the effort began at last to be visible.
"I know your temper is a hot one," he said. "But for all that, your violence quite takes me by surprise. I can't account for it, unless"--he hesitated a moment, and then finished the sentence in his usual frank, outspoken way--"unless you are sweet yourself on Miss Gwilt."
Those last words heaped fuel on the fire. They stripped the truth instantly of all concealments and disguises, and laid it bare to view. Allan's instinct had guessed, and the guiding influence stood revealed of Midwinter's interest in Miss Gwilt.
"What right have you to say that?" he asked, with raised voice and threatening eyes.
"I told you," said Allan, simply, "when I thought I was sweet on her myself. Come! come! it's a little hard, I think, even if you are in love with her, to believe everything she tells you, and not to let me say a word. Is that the way you decide between us?"
"Yes, it is!" cried the other, infuriated by Allan's second allusion to Miss Gwilt. "When I am asked to choose between the employer of a spy and the victim of a spy, I side with the victim!"
"Don't try me too hard, Midwinter, I have a temper to lose as well as you."
He stopped, struggling with himself. The torture of passion in Midwinter's face, from which a less simple and less generous nature might have recoiled in horror, touched Allan suddenly with an artless distress, which, at that moment, was little less than sublime. He advanced, with his eyes moistening, and his hand held out. "You asked me for my hand just now," he said, "and I gave it you. Will you remember old times, and give me yours, before it's too late?"
"No!" retorted Midwinter, furiously. "I may meet Miss Gwilt again, and I may want my hand free to deal with your spy!"
He had drawn back along the wall as Allan advanced, until the bracket which supported the Statuette was before instead of behind him. In the madness of his passion he saw nothing but Allan's face confronting him. In the madness of his passion, he stretched out his right hand as he answered, and shook it threateningly in the air. It struck the forgotten projection of the bracket--and the next instant the Statuette lay in fragments on the floor.