“Diane!” persisted Starrett.

With one of his incomprehensible whims, Carl swept the cards into a disorderly heap and shrugged.

“I’m through,” he said curtly.  “Wherry, take the pot.  You need it.”

“Damned irregular!” snapped Starrett sourly.

“So?” said Carl, and stared the recalcitrant into sullen silence.  Rising, he crossed to the fire, his dark, impudent eyes lingering reflectively upon Starrett’s moody face.

“Starrett,” he mused, “I wonder what I ever saw in you anyway.  You’re infernally shallow and alcoholic and your notions of poker are as distorted as your morals.  I’m not sure but I think you’d cheat.”  He shrugged wearily.  “Get out,” he said collectively.  “I’m tired.”

Starrett rose, sneering.  There had been a subtle change to-night in his customary attitude of parasitic good-fellowship.

“I’m tired, too!” he exclaimed viciously.  “Tired of your infernal whims and insults.  You’re as full of inconsistencies as a lunatic.  When you ought to be insulted, you laugh, and when a fellow least expects it, you blaze and rave and stare him out of countenance.  And I’m tired of drifting in here nights at your beck and call, to be sent home like a kid when your mood changes.  Mighty amusing for us!  If you’re not vivisecting our lives and characters for us in that impudent, philosophical way you have, you’re preaching a sermon that you couldn’t—­and wouldn’t—­follow yourself.  And then you end by messing everybody’s cards in a heap and sending us home with the last pot in Dick Wherry’s pocket whether it belongs there or not.  I tell you, I’m tired of it.”

Carl laughed, a singularly musical laugh with a note of mockery in it.

“Who,” he demanded elaborately, “who ever heard of a treasonous barnacle before?  A barnacle, Starrett, adheres and adheres, parasite to the end as long as there’s liquid, even as you adhered while the ship was keeled in gold.  Nevertheless, you’re right.  I’m all of what you say and more that you haven’t brains enough to fathom.  And some that you can’t fathom is to my credit—­and some of it isn’t.  As, for instance, my inexplicable poker penchant for you.”

To Starrett, hot of temper and impulse, his graceful mockery was maddening.  Cursing under his breath, he seized a glass and flung it furiously at his host, who laughed and moved aside with the litheness of a panther.  The glass crashed into fragments upon the wall of the marble fireplace.  Payson and Wherry hurriedly pushed back their chairs.  Then, suddenly conscious of a rustle in the doorway, they all turned.