now. Last night I thought you were off on one of your eccentric spells,
but you were crazy like a fox, you were! But don't think for one minute
that Beatrice is fool enough to drop into such a trap!"

Anthony himself did a little controlling.

"What are you talking about?" he cried.

"The thing you've tried to put over, to get me away from Beatrice!"
Johnson Boller thundered. "That's enough! Don't deny it! I know you
don't approve of matrimony; I know you never wanted me to get married; I
know that we haven't traveled around as much this last six months as we
did in the twenty years before it--and I suppose you've been lonely,
because nobody else in the world would stand for you. But by Heaven,
Anthony, I never thought you'd try to break up my family by----"

"Try to do what?"

Johnson Boller dashed the sweat of fury from his eyes.

"I come to stay with you, when Beatrice goes," he said tremblingly. "And
although there's no woman in this flat ordinarily, a woman's here last
night----"

"Stop there!" Anthony Fry cried savagely. "Do you mean that I brought
this woman here deliberately? Do you mean that I _knew_?"

"Knew!" Johnson Boller jeered.

"Then I tell you that you're an infernal ass, sir, and I decline to
defend myself!" Anthony snarled fiercely. "You! You lovesick fool and
your crazy imagination! You're too much in love to reason, but--what
about _me_?"

"Well, what about you?" Johnson Boller sneered.

"I," said Anthony, "have borne the reputation of a decent man! No women
have ever been in this apartment before, save one or two relatives! No
woman of any description has ever passed the night here before. And yet
now, when this infernal thing has happened, your poor addled wits--oh,
bah! Bah, sir!"

"Don't bah at me!" Mr. Boller said dangerously, although not quite so
dangerously, because Anthony's emotion had carried its own conviction.

Then, for a little, these two old friends stood and trembled and glared
at each other, Johnson Boller contemplating a swift and terrible
uppercut to Anthony's lean jaw, which should stretch him unconscious
perhaps for hours--Anthony meanwhile wondering superheatedly whether,
once his long fingers had wound about Johnson Boller's plump throat, he
could hold on until wretched life was extinct.

They were angry, terribly angry and almost for the first time in their
lives, and had they stood and glared for another fifteen seconds it is
possible that one or the other