Page:The Other House (London, William Heinemann, 1896), Volume 2.djvu/197

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THE OTHER HOUSE
183

"Marry?—we?" Jean looked at it in blighted horror.

"It won't be of any consequence that we shan't, that we can't: it will only stand out clear that we can." His sombre ingenuity halted, but he achieved his demonstration. "So I shall save—whom I wish to save."

Jean gave a fiercer wail. "You wish to save her?"

"I don't wish to hand her over. You can't conceive it?"

"I?" The girl looked about her for a negation not too vile. "I wish to hunt her to death! I wish to burn her alive!" All her emotion had changed to stupefaction; the flame in her eyes had dried them. "You mean she's not to suffer?"

"You want her to suffer—all?"

She was ablaze with the light of justice. "How can anything be enough? I could tear her limb from limb. That's what she tried to do to me!"

Tony lucidly concurred. "Yes—what she tried to do to you."

But she had already flashed round. "And ye—you condone the atrocity———?"