use, to join their violated trunks.

"Tiffin bell will ring in five minutes, gentlemen." Schomberg called
after them, exaggerating the deep manliness of his tone.

He had managed to upset himself very much. He expected to see them come
back infuriated and begin to bully him with an odious lack of restraint.
Desperadoes! However they didn't; they had not noticed anything unusual
about their trunks and Schomberg recovered his composure and said
to himself that he must get rid of this deadly incubus as soon as
practicable. They couldn't possibly want to stay very long; this was not
the town--the colony--for desperate characters. He shrank from action.
He dreaded any kind of disturbance--"fracas" he called it--in his hotel.
Such things were not good for business. Of course, sometimes one had to
have a "fracas;" but it had been a comparatively trifling task to seize
the frail Zangiacomo--whose bones were no larger than a chicken's--round
the ribs, lift him up bodily, dash him to the ground, and fall on
him. It had been easy. The wretched, hook-nosed creature lay without
movement, buried under its purple beard.

Suddenly, remembering the occasion of that "fracas," Schomberg groaned
with the pain as of a hot coal under his breastbone, and gave himself up
to desolation. Ah, if he only had that girl with him he would have been
masterful and resolute and fearless--fight twenty desperadoes--care
for nobody on earth! Whereas the possession of Mrs. Schomberg was no
incitement to a display of manly virtues. Instead of caring for no one,
he felt that he cared for nothing. Life was a hollow sham; he wasn't
going to risk a shot through his lungs or his liver in order to preserve
its integrity. It had no savour--damn it!

In his state of moral decomposition, Schomberg, master as he was of the
art of hotel-keeping, and careful of giving no occasion for criticism
to the powers regulating that branch of human activity, let things take
their course; though he saw very well where that course was tending.
It began first with a game or two after dinner--for the drinks,
apparently--with some lingering customer, at one of the little tables
ranged against the walls of the billiard-room. Schomberg detected the
meaning of it at once. "That's what it was! This was what they were!"
And, moving about restlessly (at that time his morose silent period had
set in), he cast sidelong looks at the game; but he said nothing. It was
not worth while having a