to what?"

"Something I have to say which will interest you very much! This
trifling family affair of yours isn't nearly so serious as you fancy. In
a day or two or a week or two it will all blow over--and if it doesn't
you may thank your lucky stars to be rid of a woman so infernally
unreasonable," said Anthony. "But I'm hanged if I'll permit you to
sacrifice that girl!"

"Ho!" said Johnson Boller derisively. "How are you going to stop it?"

"In just this way!" Anthony continued suavely. "You breathe just one
word of the truth, Johnson, and _I_ will tell a story which involves
_you_ and, while there will not be a word of truth in it, it will get
over in great shape, because everybody knows that I'm a man whose word
is as good as his bond. I'll tell such a story about you as will raise
the very hair on your head and have an infuriated mob after you before
the papers have been on the street for twenty minutes! Do you
understand?

"The mysterious woman will be an innocent country girl, I think, who
came here to make a living and lift the mortgage on the old farm, and
whom you approached on the street and finally dazzled with a few lobster
palaces. She'll be beautiful and virtuous, Johnson, and I think she'll
tell me, in tears, how you fed her the first cocktail she ever tasted!
She'll----"

"Wait!" Johnson Boller said hoarsely.

"That is the merest outline of the story I shall tell, and when I've had
time to work out the details, I'll guarantee that Beatrice will never
even consent to live in the same city with you--even if you bring sworn
proofs of the story's falsity! I'll represent you to be a thing abhorred
by all half-way decent men and even shunned by self-respecting dogs!
Don't think I'm bluffing about it, either, Johnson! I mean to protect
Mary Dalton!"

There is a vast difference between the coarse, rough character, however
blusteringly impressive he may be, and the truly strong one. Frequently,
the one is mistaken for the other, but under the first real stress the
truth comes out.

Johnson Boller for example, looking into his friend's coldly shining
eye, did not draw himself up and freeze Anthony with his conscious
virtue. He did puff out his cheeks defiantly, to be sure, and mutter
incoherently, but that lasted for only a few seconds.

Then the eye won and Johnson Boller, dropping into his chair again,
likewise dropped his head into his hands and groaned queerly.

Anthony, looking contempt at him,