“Then be good enough to drop that barrack-yard tone, or say at once that you wish to force a quarrel upon me.”
I knew he was an arrant coward; and this was not at all to his liking. After a slight pause he said in a very different manner: “I may have spoken abruptly, but I think I am entitled to an explanation.”
“Of what?” I rapped out very sharply.
“Whether you intentionally misled me as to your movements in South Africa?”
“What on earth can it matter to you or any one else except myself where I went and where I did not go in South Africa?”
“Do you say you did not meet me out there?”
“Why should I say whether I did or did not? And why should you be so anxious about it?”
“I am not anxious about it at all. No more so than yourself. But if you did meet me and now deny it, I have a right to ask your reasons.”
“I met hundreds of men, of course—thousands indeed—and equally of course you may have been one of them.”
“That is not meant as an evasion, I hope,” he exclaimed, losing his temper again.