His sense of outrage was a sort of intoxication which gave
an extraordinary forcefulness to his whole bearing. He stormed and
threatened--the misery that stared out of his haggard blue eyes
shrivelling in the heat of an almost animal fury. (And yet he
stammered too--which was comically what the other Rufus Cosgrave would
have done.)
"I--I love her. I've never loved anyone else. That Connie business--a
b-boy and girl affair--a silly flirtation--this--the real thing.
I--I'm a m-man now. N-no one's going to play fast and loose with me.
No, by God! I'll see her--she's got to have it out with me. I've a
right to an explanation at least--and by God I'll have one!"
"For what?" Stonehouse asked.
"She loved me," Cosgrave retorted.
"I don't believe it."
"You d-don't believe it? W-what do you know about it? Didn't she
behave as though she did? Didn't she go about with me? Didn't she
take things from me--no decent woman would have taken unless she loved
me?"
"She doesn't happen to be a decent woman," Stonehouse observed. "To do
her justice she doesn't pretend to be one."
Cosgrave advanced upon him as though he would have struck him across
the face. But he stopped in time, not from remorse, but as though
pulled up by a revelation of maddening absurdity.
"Oh, you--you! You don't understand. You aren't capable of
understanding. You're a block--a machine--you don't feel--you g-go
about--rolling over p-people and things like--like a damned
steam-roller.
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