Tom’s positive refusal even to permit mention of the cause of the quarrel rendered efforts at a reconciliation difficult; ’Poleon’s and Rouletta’s attempts at badinage, therefore, were weak failures, and their conversation met with only the barest politeness.  Now that the truth had escaped, neither partner could bring himself to a serious consideration of anything except his own injuries.  They exchanged evil glances, they came into direct verbal contact only seldom, and when they did it was to clash as flint upon steel.  No statement of the one was sufficiently conservative, sufficiently broad, to escape a sneer and an immediate refutation from the other.  Evidently the rift was deep and was widening rapidly.

Of course the facts were revealed eventually—­Rouletta had a way of winning confidences, a subtle, sweet persuasiveness—­they had to do with the former Mrs. Linton, that shadowy female figure which had fallen athwart Tom’s early life.  It seemed that Jerry had referred to her as a “hellion.”

Now the injured husband himself had often applied even more disparaging terms to the lady in question, therefore the visitors were puzzled at his show of rabid resentment; the most they could make out of it was that he claimed the right of disparagement as a personal and exclusive privilege, and considered detraction out of the lips of another a trespass upon his intimate private affairs, an aspersion and an insult.  The wife of a man’s bosom, he averred, was sacred; any creature who breathed disrespect of her into the ears of her husband was lower than a hole in the ground and lacked the first qualifications of a friend, a gentleman, or a citizen.

Jerry, on the other hand, would not look at the matter in this light.  Tom had called the woman a “hellion,” therefore he was privileged to do the same, and any denial of that privilege was an iniquitous encroachment upon his sacred rights.  Those rights he proposed to safeguard, to fight for if necessary.  He would shed his last drop of blood in their defense.  No cantankerous old grouch could refuse him free speech and get away with it.

“You’re not really mad at each other,” Rouletta told them.

“Ain’t we?” they hoarsely chorused.

She shook her head.  “You need a change, that’s all.  As a matter of fact, your devotion to each other is about the most beautiful, the most touching, thing I know.  You’d lay down your lives for each other; you’re like man and wife, and well you know it.”

“Who?  Us?” Jerry was aghast.  “Which one of us is the woman?  I been insulted by experts, but none of ’em ever called me ‘Mrs. Linton.’  She was a tough customer, a regular hellion—­”

“He’s off again!” Tom growled.  “Me lay down my life for a squawking parrot!  He’ll repeat that pet word for the rest of time if I don’t wring his neck.”

“Mebbe so you lak hear ’bout some other feller’s trouble,” ’Poleon broke in, diplomatically.