He swallowed his coffee and, lighting a cigarette, tipped back his chair, balancing himself with one hand on the table.

“The use of the gun,” he said lazily, “is obsolete in the modern novel; the theme now is, how to be passionate though pure.  Personally, being neither one nor the other, I remain uninterested in the modern novel.”

“Real life,” said Portlaw, spearing a fish-ball, “is damn monotonous.  The only gun-play is in the morning papers.”

“Sure,” nodded Malcourt, “and there’s too many shooting items in ’em every day to make gun-play available for a novel....  Once, when I thought I could write—­just after I left college—­they took me aboard a morning newspaper on the strength of a chance I had to discover a missing woman.

“She was in hiding; her name had been horribly spattered in a divorce, and the poor thing was in hiding—­had changed her name, crept off to a little town in Delaware.

“Our enlightened press was hunting for her; to find her was termed a ‘scoop,’ I believe....  Well—­boys pull legs off grasshoppers and do other damnable things without thinking....  I found her....  So as I knocked at her door—­in the mean little farmhouse down there in Delaware—­she opened it, smiling—­she was quite pretty—­and blew her brains out in my very face.”

“Wh-what!” bawled Portlaw, dropping knife and fork.

“I—­I want to see that girl again—­some time,” said Malcourt thoughtfully.  “I would like to tell her that I didn’t mean it—­case of boy and grasshopper, you know....  Well, as you say, gun-play has no place in real novels.  There wouldn’t be room, anyway, with all the literature and illustrations and purpose and purple preciousness; as anachronismatically superfluous as sleigh-bells in hell.”

Portlaw resumed his egg; Malcourt considered him ironically.

“Sporty Porty, are you going to wed the Pretty Lady of Pride’s Hall at Pride’s Fall some blooming day in June?”

“None of your infernal business!”

“Quite so.  I only wanted to see how the novel was coming out before somebody takes the book away from me.”

“You talk like a pint of shoe-strings,” growled Portlaw; “you’d better find out whose horse has been denting the lawn all over and tearing off several yards of sod.”

“I know already,” said Malcourt.

“Well, who had the nerve to—­”

“None of your bally business, dear friend.  Are you riding over to Pride’s to-day?”

“Yes, I am.”

“I think I’ll go, too.”

“You’re not expected.”

“That’s the charm of it, old fellow.  I didn’t expect to go; they don’t expect me; they don’t want me; I want to go!  All the elements of a delightful surprise, do you notice?”

Portlaw said, irritably:  “They asked Mrs. Malcourt and me.  Nothing was said about you.”

“Something will be said if I go,” observed Malcourt cheerfully.