“I only meant politically.”

“And I only meant socially.”

He advanced a step or two and struck me across the face with his finger tips; I took up a champagne bottle, and struck him across the head and shoulders.  Different parties of revellers kept us apart, and we walked up and down on either side of the table swearing at each other.  Although I was very wrath, I had had a certain consciousness from the first that if I played my cards well I might come very well out of the quarrel; and as I walked down the street I determined to make every effort to force on a meeting.  If the quarrel had been with one of the music hall singers I should have backed out of it, but I had everything to gain by pressing it.  I grasped the situation at once.  All the Liberal press would be on my side, the Conservative press would have nothing to say against me, no woman in it and a duel with a lord in it would be carrion for the society papers.  But the danger?  To the fear of death I do not think I was ever susceptible.  I should have been afraid of a row with a music hall singer, because I should have had much to lose by rowing with him, but as matters stood I had too much to gain to consider the possibilities of danger.  Besides there was no need to consider.  I knew very well there was no reality in it.  I had broken sixteen plates consecutively at the order to fire dozens of times; and yet it was three to one against my shooting a man at twenty paces; so it was ten thousand to one against a man, who had probably only fired off a revolver half-a-dozen times in a back yard, hitting me.  In the gallery you are firing at white on black, on the ground you are firing at black upon a neutral tint, a very different matter.  In the gallery there is nothing to disturb you; there is not a man opposite you with a pistol in his hand.  In the gallery you are calm and collected, you have risen at your ordinary hour, you are returning from a stroll through the sunlight; on the ground your nerves are altered by unusual rising, by cold air, by long expectation.  It was three to one against my killing him, it was a hundred to one against his killing me.  So I calculated the chances, so much as I took the trouble to calculate the chances, but in truth I thought very little of them; when I want to do anything I do not fear anything, and I sincerely wanted to shoot this young man.  I did not go to bed at once, but sat in the armchair thinking.  Presently a cab came rattling up to the door, and one of the revellers came upstairs.  He told me that everything had been arranged; I told him that I was not in the habit of allowing others to arrange my affairs for me, and went to bed.  One thing, and only one thing puzzled me, who was I to ask to be my second?  My old friends were scattered, they had disappeared; and among my new acquaintances I could not think of one that would do.  None of the Straddlers would do, that was certain; I wanted some one that could be depended upon,