As if the mere heat of his accusation had ignited her fury Lilas interrupted him angrily:  “Oh, cut out that love-and-gratitude talk!  I want money, do you understand?  Money!  You think I won’t dare go through with this, and so does Merkle.  You, neither of you, can understand why I’ll take a chance on ‘the chair’ just to make you pay.  Well, that’s because you are men, and because you are healthy and happy and have something to live for.  But what have I got?  I’m sick.  I’m going to pieces.  I’ll be gone in a few years if I don’t get the coin.  I’ve always fought and I’ve usually been licked, but I won’t be licked this time.  Men like you and John Merkle licked me—­Why, I was licked before I had learned to fight back, and you taught me to hate you before I had put on long dresses.”

“You know that’s not true!” Bob cried, sharply.  “You harmed men before they ever harmed you.  You hated Jarvis Hammon, and yet he did more for you than any one in all your life; Merkle helped you, too, when you needed help, and so did I. Lorelei was your friend—­”

“Bah!  I haven’t any friends; I never had any, and I don’t want any now.  Nobody ever did anything for me.  You and John Merkle are going to pay me for what other men have put me through.  Oh, come, I’m not bluffing!  You’re afraid to stand the gaff, but I’m not.  I’m getting old.  My looks are gone.  Who’s going to pay me if you don’t?  Who—­” Lilas’s voice, which has risen steadily, broke now, and she shook a clenched fist in Wharton’s face.  He saw that she had worked herself up into one of her abrupt, reasonless rages.

“I’ve got you!” she keened.  “I can drag you and your sick wife, and Merkle, and those Hammon women out into the light, and I’ll do it, too.  I can make you all squirm, so let’s get down to cases.  There’s millions of dollars among you, millions that were squeezed out of my kind of people; now I’m going to try my hand at squeezing.  If I lose—­very well.  But I’ll holler, and you’ll have to stop my mouth or the world will hear.  You don’t dare holler.”

“I’m glad you’re in the open at last,” Bob told her, roughly.  “We’ll see if Melcher is as desperate as—­”

“To hell with Melcher!” screamed the girl.  “He’s a fool.  He’s scared already, but I’m not, and I’m the one to settle with, remember that.”  She was a-quiver now; her nerves, tortured from overstimulation, were jumping; but she felt a tremendous sense of power, together with a contemptuous disregard of consequences.  “Go to Max, if you want to.  Sound the alarm.  Do anything you please,” she mocked, “but get your pennies together or I’ll bawl you out from the housetops.”

There was no arguing with her, as she was drunk with the sense of her advantage, and Bob could only depart, his ears ringing unpleasantly with her threats.

As to just what effect her unrestrained spleen would have, or in which direction it might work the greatest damage, he was uncomfortably in doubt.  For himself, he had no particular fears, but he dreaded terribly the effect upon his wife.  It seemed to him, therefore, that the only way of gaining time was to pay Lilas enough to satisfy her.  The more he thought of this the more imperative seemed the necessity, but when he ventured to submit the proposition to Merkle the banker curtly refused to entertain it.