Page:The Millbank Case - 1905 - Eldridge.djvu/234

 hastily if he could have made any mistake, and this notwithstanding he was absolutely certain of all the facts.

"But" he began, hesitatingly.

"Go!" she said, permitting no further utterance, now that he had said what he had come to say. A passionate joy in her ability to deal harshly with him, regardless of the personal risk to herself in so doing, seized her. She had not subjected her line of action to the scrutiny of judgment. For once thoroughly a woman, in that she discarded the masculine caution which she had cultivated as a habit, she gave head to instinct, which carried her past all doubt, all weighing of chances, to the least dangerous course that, in her situation, was open to her.

Almost an insane fury to send one final shaft that should sting in the breast of this woman seized this man who, by all of his traditions, should have held himself the better together, the farther his plans miscarried. Moving toward the door, he cried:

"Shall I report to my employers—your sons?"

To this she had the single word, "Go!"