"Bah! a fighter!" He snapped contemptuous fingers. "There's the look in his eye sometimes, but I've disarmed him. He _can't_ fight me, his benefactor, his best friend. Never fear; he'll wilt, wither, shrivel up. Oh, trust me for that. And suppose the impossible, suppose the worm turns in some fit of wormish desperation. I've the _coup_, have I not? You know what his mother is to him, a damned romantic memory of pure womanhood and all that rot. Suppose him capable of so much as an eye-flash of defiance. Why, then, my child, he'll know who--he'll know _what_--his mother was; and he'll know my right to describe her. He'll know what _he_ is. And the words won't puzzle him: he'll need no lexicon--crisp, Anglo-Saxon words. Do you think that will leave any fight in him--her shame and his? By Gad! Nell, it's too good to keep from him. He shall have it anyway, though I'd meant to keep it back for my own sake. But that shall be the clincher. Before her face there I'll tell him what she was." "Not that, Randall, surely not that!" Her veil of calmness had flown on the wind of his hate. She knew she must reveal herself. Her words had been so near a cry that he turned on her in amazement. "Listen, Randall, don't--don't do that. Let him off. I promise to take him away. It's all true; you've handled him well, and you can break him now--but don't. Please, please let him go. I'll take him away, I tell you. I promise he shall never bother you again." He looked at her, incredulous. "You're asking me to consider _him_--really?" "No, no--to consider me. Please, please listen--please consider me." "But you--I thought you----" "Randall"--she had regained a little of her first coolness--"I'm done for. I found that out to-day. I've a year to live, at most. A scant year, if it's to be like this. Try to grasp it. I've wanted so much, had so little of life. But, I must go, they tell me. Can you understand what that means, as well as I understood what this meant to you--a sentence of death, a few little months to snatch at happiness?" He stared at her uncertainly, but half comprehending. She saw that the drink was affecting him at last. His eyes were dulled, his face had lost its centered look. "Going to die, Eleanor? Die in a year? What rot! Don't talk rot. Nobody dies in a year." He spoke carefully, with a deliberate attack on each word, as if he mistrusted his tongue. "But it's true, Randall, I swear it's true. Can you understand?"