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. You
don't care whether she's happy in this world or the next; what you want
is what you can see of her, for your life in this world only.
You want--"

The old man interrupted him with a savage emotion which Jonas Billings
said made him look like "a satyre."

"I want to save her from the wrath to come," he said. "This here holy
Book gives me my rights. It says, 'Thou shalt not steal,' and the
trouble I have comes from you that's stole my wife, that's put her soul
in jeopardy, robbed my home--"