Page:Frank Packard - Greater Love Hath No Man.djvu/166

 down with a crushing, vise-like grip on Merton's shoulder.

"Keep away," Merton grovelled. "Keep away—keep your hands off me with that ghastly strength of yours."

"Answer me!"—Varge's voice was ominously, deadly low. "How far has this thing gone?"

"I—I love her," mumbled Merton. "I—I told her so."

"And she?"—Varge's lips scarcely moved, as the words came tensely.

"She said she didn't love me"—the snarl was creeping back into Merton's voice, and an ugly look into his face.

Varge's hand dropped from the other's shoulder, and he stepped back.

"Thank God," he said, "she has been saved that hurt!"

"Is there anything else you want to know?" Merton burst out violently. "Anything else you can bully out of me because you hold something over my head? If there isn't, I'll go."

Varge looked at him for a long minute—and in that minute the months of prison horror rose before him, came again the scene of a murdered father, then the picture of Janet Rand in all her sweetness, her trust, her innocence, her fair young life—and a red mist swam before his eyes in which Merton's face seemed to assume ghoulish, distorted features, filling him with insensate fury, prompting him to crush out the treacherous, inhuman life as he would that of some foul, creeping thing. He turned suddenly away—he dared not trust himself