ulte say?'

Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you liar!' Kurrell's face
changed. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.

'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told you that you two are free
to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough to explain
the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me, Kurrell old man
haven't you?'

Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence about
being willing to give 'satisfaction.' But his interest in the woman was
dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was abusing her for
her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so easy to have broken off
the thing gently and by degrees, and now he was saddled with Boulte's
voice recalled him.

'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I'm
pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.'

Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his wrongs,
Boulte added,

'Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the woman,
now you've got her. You've been a true friend to her too, haven't you?'

Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond him.

'What do you mean?' he said.

Boulte answered, more to himself than the questioner: 'My wife came
over to Mrs. Vansuythen's just now; and it seems you'd been telling
Mrs. Vansuythen that you'd never cared for Emma. I suppose you lied, as
usual. What had Mrs. Vansuythen to do with you, or you with her? Try to
speak the truth for once in a way.'

Kurrell took the double insult without wincing, and replied by another
question: 'Go on. What happened?'

'Emma fainted,' said Boulte simply. 'But, look here, what had you been
saying to Mrs. Vansuythen?'

Kurrell laughed. Mrs. Boulte had, with unbridled tongue, made havoc of
his plans; and he could at least retaliate by hurting the man in whose
eyes he was humiliated and shown dishonourable.

'Said to her? What does a man tell a lie like that for? I suppose I said
pretty much what you've said, unless I'm a good deal mistaken.'

'I spoke the truth,' said Boulte, again more to himself than Kurrell.
'Emma told me she hated me. She has no right in me.'

'No! I suppose not. You're only her husband, y'know. And what did Mrs.
Vansuythen say after you had laid your disengaged heart at her feet?'

Kurrell felt almost virtuous as he put the question.

'I don't think that matters,' Boulte replied; 'and it doesn't concern
you.'

'But it does!