“Now,” I said, “are you better?”
“A little drop more and I’m a peacock with my tail up.” He tossed off a second dose of almost like proportion.
“Now,” he said, dangling his legs over the bedside, and giving a foolish reckless laugh, “question, mon frère, and I will answer.”
Though his manner disgusted and repelled me, I must needs get to the root of things.
“You fled from him to England again?”
“To London, of all places. It’s the safest in the world, they say; where a man may leave his wife and live in the next street for twenty-five years without her knowing it.”
“You haven’t left yours?”
“No—we stick together. Zyp’s trumps, she is, you long-faced moralizer; not that she holds one by her looks any longer. And that’s to my credit for sticking to her. You missed something in my being beforehand with you there, I can tell you.”
Was this pitiful creature worth one thrill of passion or resentment? I let him go on.
“For months that devil followed us,” he said. “At last he forced a quarrel upon me in some vile drinking-place and brought me a challenge from the man he was seconding. You should have seen his face as he handed it to me! It took all the fighting nerve out of me. I swear I would have stood up to his fellow if he had found another backer.”