Peter made no reply, though Lispenard looked as well as asked a question.

“Perhaps,” continued Lispenard, “she talked too much, and so did not remember to ask you?”

Still Peter said nothing.

“Are you sure she didn’t give you a chance to have more of her society?” Lispenard was smiling.

“Ogden,” said Peter gently, “you are behaving contemptibly and you know it.”

The color blazed up into Lispenard’s face and he rose, saying: 

“Did I understand you aright?” The manner and attitude were both threatening though repressed.

“If you tell me that I misunderstood you, I will apologize.  If you think the statement insulting, I will withdraw it.  I did not speak to insult you; but because I wished you to know how your questions impressed me.”

“When a man tells another he is contemptible, he cannot expect to escape results.  This is no place to have a scene.  You may send me your apology when we reach New York—­”

Peter interrupted.  “I shall, if you will tell me I wronged you in supposing your questions to be malicious.”

Lispenard paid no attention to the interjection.  “Otherwise,” he finished, “we will consider our relations ended.”  He walked away.

Peter wrote Lispenard that evening a long letter.  He did not apologize in it, but it ended: 

“There should be no quarrel between us, for we ought to be friends.  If alienation has come, it is due to what has occurred to-day, and that shall not cause unkind feelings, if I can help it.  An apology is due somewhere.  You either asked questions you had no right to ask, or else I misjudged you.  I have written you my point of view.  You have your own.  I leave the matter to your fairness.  Think it over, and if you still find me in the wrong, and will tell me so, I will apologize.”

He did not receive a reply.  Meeting Ogden Ogden a few days later, he was told that Lispenard had gone west for a hunting trip, quite unexpectedly.  “He said not to expect him back till he came.  He seemed out of sorts at something.”  In September Peter had a letter from Miss De Voe.  Merely a few lines saying that she had decided to spend the winter abroad, and was on the point of sailing.  “I am too hurried to see my friends, but did not like to go without some good-byes, so I write them.”  On the whole, as in the case of most comedies, there was little amusement for the actual performers.  A great essayist has defined laughter as a “feeling of superiority in the laugher over the object laughed at.”  If this is correct, it makes all humor despicable.  Certainly much coarseness, meanness and cruelty are every day tolerated, because of the comic covering with which it is draped.