“I’ll find them, if I die for it!  I’ll shoot them down.  I’ll shoot them down like dogs!  I will, by all that’s holy, I will!  I’ll butcher them!  I’ll shoot them down, there at my feet, rolling at my feet!”

All at once he felt a weight on his arm, and heard De Gollyer saying, vainly: 

“Dear boy, be calm, be calm.”

“Calm!” he cried, with a scream, his anger suddenly focusing on his friend, “Calm!  I won’t be calm!  What!  I come back—­slaving all day, slaving for her—­come back to take her out to dinner where she wants to go—­to the play she wants to see, and I find—­nothing—­this letter—­this bomb—­this thunderbolt!  Everything gone—­my home broken up—­my name dishonored—­my whole life ruined!  And you say be calm—­be calm—­be calm!”

Then, fearing the hysteria gaining possession of him, he dropped back violently into an armchair and covered his face.

During this outburst, De Gollyer had deliberately removed his gloves, folded them and placed them in his breast pocket.  His reputation for social omniscience had been attained by the simple expedient of never being convinced.  As soon as the true situation had been unfolded, a slight, skeptical smile hovered about his thin, flouting lips, and, looking at his old friend, he was not unpleasantly aware of something comic in the attitudes of grief.  He made one or two false starts, buttoning his trim cutaway, and then said in a purposely higher key: 

“My dear old chap, we must consider—­we really must consider what is to be done.”

“There is only one thing to be done,” cried Lightbody in a voice of thunder.

“Permit me!”

“Kill them!”

“One moment!”

De Gollyer, master of himself, never abandoning his critical enjoyment, softened his voice to that controlled note that is the more effective for being opposed to frenzy.

“Sit down—­come now, sit down!”

Lightbody resisted.

“Sit down, there—­come—­you have called me in.  Do you want my advice?  Do you?  Well, just quiet down.  Will you listen?”

“I am quiet,” said Lightbody, suddenly submissive.  The frenzy of his rage passed, but to make his resolution doubly impressive, he extended his arm and said slowly: 

“But remember, my mind is made up.  I shall not budge.  I shall shoot them down like dogs!  You see I say quietly—­like dogs!”

“My dear old pal,” said De Gollyer with a well-bred shrug of his shoulders, “you’ll do nothing of the sort.  We are men of the world, my boy, men of the world.  Shooting is archaic—­for the rural districts.  We’ve progressed way beyond that—­men of the world don’t shoot any more.”

“I said it quietly,” said Lightbody, who perceived, not without surprise, that he was no longer at the same temperature.  However, he concluded with normal conviction:  “I shall kill them both, that’s all.  I say it quietly.”

This gave De Gollyer a certain hortatory moment of which he availed himself, seeking to reduce further the dramatic tension.