“That’s a damned impudent thing to say,” returned Dysart, staring at him.  A dull red stained his face, then faded.

Duane’s eyebrows went up—­just a shade—­yet so insolently that the other stepped forward, the corners of his mouth white and twitching.

“I can speak more plainly,” he said.  “If you can’t appreciate a pleasant hint I can easily accommodate you with the alternative.”

There was silence for a moment.

“Dysart,” said Duane, “what chance do you think you’d have in landing the—­alternative?”

“That concerns me,” said Dysart; and the pinched muscles around the mouth grew whiter and the man looked suddenly older.  Duane had never before noticed how gray his temples were growing.

He said in a voice under perfect control:  “You’re right; the chances you care to take with me concern yourself.  As for your ill-humour, I suppose I have earned it by being attentive to your wife.  What is it you wish; that my hitherto very harmless attentions should cease?”

“Yes,” said Dysart, and his square jaw quivered.

“Well, they won’t.  It takes the sort of man you are to strike classical attitudes.  And, absurd as the paradox appears—­and even taking into consideration your notorious indifference to your wife and your rather silly reputation as a debutante chaser—­I do believe, Dysart, that, deep inside of you somewhere, there is enough latent decency to have inspired this resentment toward me—­a resentment perfectly natural in any man who acts squarely toward his wife—­but rather far fetched in your case.”

Dysart, pallid, menacing, laid his hand on a chair.

The other laughed.

“As bad as that?” he asked contemptuously.  “Don’t do it, Dysart; it isn’t in your line.  You’re only a good-looking, popular, dancing man; all your deviltry is in your legs, and I’d be obliged if they’d presently waft you out of my room.”

“I suppose,” said Dysart unsteadily, “that you would make yourself noisily ridiculous if I knocked your blackguard head off.”

“It’s only in novels that people are knocked down successfully and artistically,” admitted the other.  “In everyday life they resent it.  Yes—­if you do anything hysterical there will be some sort of a disgraceful noise, I suppose.  It’s shoot or suit in these unromantic days, Dysart, otherwise the newspapers laugh at you.”

Dysart’s well-shaped fists relaxed, the chair dropped, but even when he let it go murder danced in his eyes.

“Yes,” he said, “it’s shoot or a suit in these days; you’re perfectly right, Mallett.  And we’ll let it go at that for the present.”

He stood a moment, straight, handsome, his clearly stencilled eyebrows knitted, watching Duane.  Whatever in the man’s face and figure was usually colourless, unaccented, irresolute, disappeared as he glared rigidly at the other.

For there is no resentment like the resentment of the neglectful, no jealousy like the jealousy of the faithless.