I was too surprised to make any further comment.

Bell lived in a comfortable, plain, square, two-story white house on the edge of the little town.  I waited in the parlor—­a room depressingly genteel—­furnished with red plush, straw matting, looped-up lace curtains, and a glass case large enough to contain a mummy, full of mineral specimens.

While I waited, I heard, upstairs, that unmistakable sound instantly recognized the world over—­a bickering woman’s voice, rising as her anger and fury grew.  I could hear, between the gusts, the temperate rumble of Bell’s tones, striving to oil the troubled waters.

The storm subsided soon; but not before I had heard the woman say, in a lower, concentrated tone, rather more carrying than her high-pitched railings:  “This is the last time.  I tell you—­the last time.  Oh, you WILL understand.”

The household seemed to consist of only Bell and his wife and a servant or two.  I was introduced to Mrs. Bell at supper.

At first sight she seemed to be a handsome woman, but I soon perceived that her charm had been spoiled.  An uncontrolled petulance, I thought, and emotional egotism, an absence of poise and a habitual dissatisfaction had marred her womanhood.  During the meal, she showed that false gayety, spurious kindliness and reactionary softness that mark the woman addicted to tantrums.  Withal, she was a woman who might be attractive to many men.

After supper, Bell and I took our chairs outside, set them on the grass in the moonlight and smoked.  The full moon is a witch.  In her light, truthful men dig up for you nuggets of purer gold; while liars squeeze out brighter colors from the tubes of their invention.  I saw Bell’s broad, slow smile come out upon his face and linger there.

“I reckon you think George and me are a funny kind of friends,” he said.  “The fact is we never did take much interest in each other’s company.  But his idea and mine, of what a friend should be, was always synonymous and we lived up to it, strict, all these years.  Now, I’ll give you an idea of what our idea is.

“A man don’t need but one friend.  The fellow who drinks your liquor and hangs around you, slapping you on the back and taking up your time, telling you how much he likes you, ain’t a friend, even if you did play marbles at school and fish in the same creek with him.  As long as you don’t need a friend one of that kind may answer.  But a friend, to my mind, is one you can deal with on a strict reciprocity basis like me and George have always done.

“A good many years ago, him and me was connected in a number of ways.  We put our capital together and run a line of freight wagons in New Mexico, and we mined some and gambled a few.  And then, we got into trouble of one or two kinds; and I reckon that got us on a better understandable basis than anything else did, unless it was the fact that we never had much personal use for each other’s ways.