"Hell, ma'am, there's no use talkin'! He's your husband, you've said you loved him, that's enough. But if he, if he wasn't your husband, if he ..."
He jerked open the front of his shirt, reached in and drew out his flat, blue automatic pistol.
"Don't you be afraid of me," he cried fiercely, grasping her wrist. "Don't you ever!
"You take this gun; you keep it. It's mine. I don't want to be able to hurt him, if I should ever lose my head. Sometimes when I set there an' look at him an' hear him cussin' me, I get hot in th' head; hot an' heavy an' it buzzes. I ... I thought maybe sometime I might go crazy an' shoot him,"--with deadly seriousness. "An' I wouldn't do that, ma'am, not to yours, no matter what he might do or say to me. I brought my rifle in to-day to have th' sights fixed; they needed it an' 't would get it out of th' house. You'll keep this gun, won't you, please, ma'am?"
His pleading was as direct as that of a child and, eyes on his with a mingling of emotions, Ann Lytton reached a groping hand for the weapon. She was stunned. Her nervous weakness, his strength, the putting into words of that great love he bore for her, the suggested picture of contrast with the man between them, the conflict it all aroused in her conscience, the reasonless surging of her deepest emotions, combined to bewilder the woman. She reached out slowly to take his weapon and do his bidding, moved by a subconscious desire to obey, and all the while her eyes grew wider, her breath faster in its slipping between her parted lips.
Her fingers touched the metal, warmed by his body heat, closed on it and her hand, holding the pistol, fell back to her side. She turned her face from him and, with a palm hard against one cheek, whispered,
"I presume it is, ma'am,"--drearily, "but I can't help it, lovin' you."
"No, no, not that!" she cried. "I didn't mean _that_ was horrible. It ... it isn't. The horrible thing is the rest, the whole situation."
"I know it is," he went on, heedless of her explanation, moving toward the window and looking into the street as he talked, his back to her. "I know it is, but it had to be. If I had kept from talkin' it would sort of festered in me. When a horse runs somethin' in his foot, you've got to cut th' hoof away, got to hurt him for a while, or it'll go bad with him. Let what's in there out an' gettin' along will be simple.