"Oh, let's have no heroics, Reese," she intervened. Her savage and relentless cruelty stung him to the very soul. "I've discovered the whole affair, and now I am laying a choice before you. I know why you are fighting Macgowan so desperately. I know why you pretend to fight on behalf of the sixteen thousand investors--" "Pretend!" he uttered in a strangled voice. "Pretend!" "--and now it is going to end." She was cold, inexorable, emotionless. "You may as well learn that if you keep up this fight, you'll end by being branded as a felon. I would stick by you through that disgrace, Reese, if it were achieved in a just cause. Now that I know the truth, now that I know retribution is upon you for what you did to my father--it's all ended for me." She paused an instant, then went on. "Go and see Macgowan. It may be too late, but at least make the effort. Give up this fight. Abandon this righteous pose of yours, and be done with it. Either that, or I shall leave this house immediately." Armstrong was stupefied. He could only stand staring at her like a man paralyzed. The most frightful part of it was his absolute ignorance of what had so aroused her anger and bitterness. He could not imagine how she had gained this idea that he had stolen her father's company, that retribution for such a theft was facing him. This was all so preposterous to him that he could not even view the accusation in any correct perspective. And then the scorn of her words reached to the quick, seared him intolerably. That she should so turn upon him in this hour of defeat and black despair, evoked from him a passionate fury. "Tell me what's behind all this!" he demanded hotly. "Out with it, Dot! What basis have you for uttering such damnable lies about me?" He received a frigid glance. "That is gentlemanly language to use, Reese," was her response. "I was not brought up to hear such words addressed to me--but I shan't argue with you. Do you intend to give up this fight or not?" "Dot, listen to me!" he broke out frantically, desperately. "Whatever has come over you, at least listen to me! Surely you can't ask such a thing, in all sanity? Oh, the devil himself must be in this! You can't mean it, Dot; you've been with me from the first, helping and backing me--and now you ask that I submit! You know I'm not fighting for myself alone--" Her eyes, dark with anger, flashed at this. "I thought it was not for yourself, but I've learned better. I've learned that you are using these investors as a shield for yourself. Do you think it's for myself alone that I'm making this demand? No, no! It's not for my sake that I want this mad obstinacy of yours abandoned!" The wild vehemence of her words frightened him, sent him into a cold chill of stark terror. He had never seen her in so blazing an anger, so passionate a fury--he had not dreamed such a condition would be possible to Dorothy Armstrong.