"The furrin element in him," as
Jonas Billings called it, had been at full flood ever since he had bade
his mother good-bye. A storm of anger had been raised in him. As he said
to himself, he had had enough; he had been filled up to the chin by the
Mazarine business; and his impulsive youth wanted to end it by some
smashing act which would be sensational and decisive. So it was that Fate
offered the opportunity, as he came up the front street of Askatoon, and
found himself face to face with Mazarine, over against the offices of
Burlingame.
"A word with you, Mr. Mazarine," he said, with the air of a man who wants
to ease his mind of its trouble by action. "Back there at the station, I
kept my tongue and let you down easy enough, because my mother was
present. She is old and sensitive, and she doesn't like to see her son
doing the dirty work every man must do some time or other, when there's
street cleaning to be done. Now, let me tell you this: you've slandered
as good a girl, you've libelled as straight a wife, as the best man in
the world ever had. You've made a public scandal of your private home.
You've treated the pure thing as if it were the foul thing; and yet, you
want to keep the pure thing that you treat like a foul thing, under your
rawhide whip, because it's young and beautiful and good. You don't want
to save her soul"--he pointed to the Bible, which the old man had
snatched from his pocket again--"you don't want to save her soul.
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