His gentle voice, his cool mien, his satire, were as giant’s arms to drag Belllounds back from murder.  The rifle was raised, the hammer reset, the butt lowered to the ground, while Belllounds, snarling and choking, fought for speech.

“I’ll get even—­with you,” he said, huskily.  “I’m on to your game now.  I’ll fix you later.  But—­I’ll do you harm now if you mix in with this!”

Then he wheeled to Columbine, and as if he had just recognized her, a change that was pitiful and shocking convulsed his face.  He leaned toward her, pointing with shaking, accusing hand.

“I saw you—­up there.  I watched—­you,” he panted.

Columbine faced him, white and mute.

“It was you—­wasn’t it?” he yelled.

“Yes, of course it was.”

She might have struck him, for the way he flinched.

“What was that—­a trick—­a game—­a play all fixed up for my benefit?”

“I don’t understand you,” she replied.

“Bah!  You—­you white-faced cat!...  I saw you!  Saw you in Moore’s arms!  Saw him hug you—­kiss you!...  Then—­I saw—­you put up your arms—­round his neck—­kiss him—­kiss him—­kiss him!...  I saw all that—­didn’t I?”

“You must have, since you say so,” she returned, with perfect composure.

“But did you?” he almost shrieked, the blood cording and bulging red, as if about to burst the veins of temples and neck.

“Yes, I did,” she flashed.  There was primitive woman uppermost in her now, and a spirit no man might provoke with impunity.

“You love him?” he asked, very low, incredulously, with almost insane eagerness for denial in his query.

Then Wade saw the glory of her—­saw her mother again in that proud, fierce uplift of face, that flamed red and then blazed white—­saw hate and passion and love in all their primal nakedness.

“Love him!  Love Wilson Moore?  Yes, you fool!  I love him!  Yes! Yes! YES!”

That voice would have pierced the heart of a wooden image, so Wade thought, as all his strung nerves quivered and thrilled.

Belllounds uttered a low cry of realization, and all his instinctive energy seemed on the verge of collapse.  He grew limp, he sagged, he tottered.  His sensorial perceptions seemed momentarily blunted.

Wade divined the tragedy, and a pang of great compassion overcame him.  Whatever Jack Belllounds was in character, he had inherited his father’s power to love, and he was human.  Wade felt the death in that stricken soul, and it was the last flash of pity he ever had for Jack Belllounds.

“You—­you—­” muttered Belllounds, raising a hand that gathered speed and strength in the action.  The moment of a great blow had passed, like a storm-blast through a leafless tree.  Now the thousand devils of his nature leaped into ascendancy.  “You!—­” He could not articulate.  Dark and terrible became his energy.  It was like a resistless current forced through leaping thought and leaping muscle.