t from
Spearman's usual bluff, hearty manner, seemed almost contemptuous. He
seated himself, his big, powerful hands clasped on the table, his gray
eyes studying Corvet closely. As Corvet, without acknowledging the
apology, took the pad and began to write an order for both, Spearman
interfered; he had already lunched; he would take only a cigar. The
waiter took the order and went away.

When he returned, the two men were obviously in bitter quarrel.
Corvet's tone, low pitched but violent, sounded steadily in the room,
though his words were inaudible. The waiter, as he set the food upon
the table, felt relief that Corvet's outburst had fallen on other
shoulders than his.

It had fallen, in fact, upon the shoulders best able to bear it.
Spearman--still called, though he was slightly over forty now, "young"
Spearman--was the power in the great ship-owning company of Corvet,
Sherrill, and Spearman. Corvet had withdrawn, during recent years,
almost entirely from active life; some said the sorrow and
mortification of his wife's leaving him had made him choose more and
more the seclusion of his library in the big lonely house on the North
Shore, and had given Spearman the chance to rise; but those most
intimately acquainted with the affairs of the great ship-owning firm
maintained that Spearman's rise had not been granted him but had been
forced by Spearman himself. In any case, Spearman was not the one to
accept Corvet's irritation meekly.

For nearly an hour, the quarrel continued with intermitted truces of
silence. The waiter, listening, as waiters always do, caught at times
single sentences.

"You have had that idea for some time?" he heard from Corvet.

"We have had an understanding for more than a month."

"How definite?"

Spearman's answer was not audible, but it more intensely agitated
Corvet; his lips set; a hand which held his fork clasped and unclasped
nervously; he dropped his fork and, after that, made no pretense of
eating.

The waiter, following this, caught only single words.
"Sherrill"--that, of course, was the other partner. "Constance"--that
was Sherrill's daughter. The other names he heard were names of ships.
But, as the quarrel went on, the manners of the two men changed;
Spearman, who at first had been assailed by Corvet, now was assailing
him. Corvet sat back in his seat, while Spearman pulled at his cigar
and now and then took it from his lips and gestured with it between his
fing