you love her. Yet you act as if her
love were a degrading influence in your life, as if she were a bad
woman instead of one who ought to inspire a man to do and be his best.
How ashamed she'd be of you, of your love, if she could see you as you
are now--the tempter of all the bad impulses in this college."

He could not trust himself to reply. He was suffocating with rage and
shame. He lifted his hat, walked rapidly away from her and went home.
Pierson had never seen him in an ugly mood before. And he, too, was in
an ugly mood--disgusted with his own conduct, angry at Scarborough,
whom he held responsible for the unprecedented excesses of this last
trip to Chicago and for their consequences.

"What's happened?" he asked sourly. "What's the matter with YOU?"

"Your Olivia," replied Scarborough, with a vicious sneer, "has been
insulting me for your sins. She is a shrew! I don't wonder you
dropped her."

Pierson rose slowly and faced him.

"You astonish me," he said. "I shouldn't have believed you capable of
a speech which no gentleman could possibly utter."

"YOU, sitting as a court of honor to decide what's becoming a
gentleman!" Scarborough looked amused contempt. "My dear Pierson,
you're worse than offensive--you are ridiculous."

"No man shall say such things to me especially a man who notoriously
lives by his wits."

Scarborough caught him up as if he had been a child and pinned him
against the wall. "Take that back," he said, "or I'll kill you." His
tone was as colorless as his face.

"Kill and be damned," replied Pierson, cool and disdainful. "You're a
coward."

Scarborough's fingers closed on Pierson's throat. Then flashed into
his mind that warning which demands and gets a hearing in the wildest
tempest of passion before an irrevocable act can be done. It came to
him in the form of a reminder of his laughing remark to Pauline when he
told her of the traditions of murder in his family. He released
Pierson and fled from the apartment.

Half an hour later Pierson was reading a note from him:

"I've invited some friends this evening. I trust it will be convenient
for you to absent yourself. They'll be out by eleven, and then, if you
return, we can decide which is to stay in the apartment and which to
leave."

Pierson went away to his fraternity house and at half-past eight
Scarborough, Chalmers, Jack Wilton and Brigham sat down to a game of
poker. They had played about an hour, the