“That’s what you want the money for?” he finally raised his head to ask.

The word came out of the depths of Ralph’s anguish:  “Yes.”

“And why you want it in such a hurry.  I see.”  Moffatt reverted to the study of his boots.  “It’s a lot of money.”

“Yes.  That’s the difficulty.  And I...she...”

Ralph’s tongue was again too thick for his mouth.  “I’m afraid she won’t wait...or take less...”

Moffatt, abandoning the boots, was scrutinizing him through half-shut lids.  “No,” he said slowly, “I don’t believe Undine Spragg’ll take a single cent less.”

Ralph felt himself whiten.  Was it insolence or ignorance that had prompted Moffatt’s speech?  Nothing in his voice or face showed the sense of any shades of expression or of feeling:  he seemed to apply to everything the measure of the same crude flippancy.  But such considerations could not curb Ralph now.  He said to himself “Keep your temper—­keep your temper—­” and his anger suddenly boiled over.

“Look here, Moffatt,” he said, getting to his feet, “the fact that I’ve been divorced from Mrs. Marvell doesn’t authorize any one to take that tone to me in speaking of her.”

Moffatt met the challenge with a calm stare under which there were dawning signs of surprise and interest.  “That so?  Well, if that’s the case I presume I ought to feel the same way:  I’ve been divorced from her myself.”

For an instant the words conveyed no meaning to Ralph; then they surged up into his brain and flung him forward with half-raised arm.  But he felt the grotesqueness of the gesture and his arm dropped back to his side.  A series of unimportant and irrelevant things raced through his mind; then obscurity settled down on it.  “This man...This man...” was the one fiery point in his darkened consciousness....  “What on earth are you talking about?” he brought out.

“Why, facts,” said Moffatt, in a cool half-humorous voice.  “You didn’t know?  I understood from Mrs. Marvell your folks had a prejudice against divorce, so I suppose she kept quiet about that early episode.  The truth is,” he continued amicably, “I wouldn’t have alluded to it now if you hadn’t taken rather a high tone with me about our little venture; but now it’s out I guess you may as well hear the whole story.  It’s mighty wholesome for a man to have a round now and then with a few facts.  Shall I go on?”

Ralph had stood listening without a sign, but as Moffatt ended he made a slight motion of acquiescence.  He did not otherwise change his attitude, except to grasp with one hand the back of the chair that Moffatt pushed toward him.