I feel that. Where are you going, Jim?"
Rivers' wrath flamed out. "None o' your business. Come, Blanche." He
turned to her. His tones betrayed him again.
Bailey faced him, with his back to the door.
"Wait a minute, Jim."
"Get out o' my way."
There was a silence, and in that silence the two men faced each other as
if under some strange light. They seemed alien to each other, yet
familiar, too. Bailey spoke first:
"Jim, I know all about it. You're stealing another man's wife--and, by
God, I won't let you do it!" His voice shook so that he hardly uttered
his sentence intelligibly. The sweat of shame broke out on his face, but
he did not falter. "I've seen this coming on all summer. I ought to have
interfered before--"
Rivers laid a hand on him. "Stand out o' my way, or I'll kill you."
The quiver went out of Bailey's voice. He took his partner's hand down
from his shoulder, and when he dropped it there was a bracelet of
whitened flesh where his fingers had circled it. "You'll stay right
here, Jim, till I say 'go.
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