“Arthur!” exclaimed the shipowner, rising with dignity, “I am amazed at your levity!”
There was no answer but peal after peal of laughter, so loud and boisterous that even James began to doubt whether there was not something more the matter here than levity.
“Just like a hysterical woman,” he muttered, turning, with a contemptuous shrug of his shoulders, to tramp impatiently up and down the room. “Really, Arthur, you're worse than Julia; there, stop laughing! I can't wait about here all night.”
He might as well have asked the crucifix to come down from its pedestal. Arthur was past caring for remonstrances or exhortations; he only laughed, and laughed, and laughed without end.
“This is absurd!” said James, stopping at last in his irritated pacing to and fro. “You are evidently too much excited to be reasonable to-night. I can't talk business with you if you're going on that way. Come to me to-morrow morning after breakfast. And now you had better go to bed. Good-night.”
He went out, slamming the door. “Now for the hysterics downstairs,” he muttered as he tramped noisily away. “I suppose it'll be tears there!”
The frenzied laughter died on Arthur's lips. He snatched up the hammer from the table and flung himself upon the crucifix.
With the crash that followed he came suddenly to his senses, standing before the empty pedestal, the hammer still in his hand, and the fragments of the broken image scattered on the floor about his feet.
He threw down the hammer. “So easy!” he said, and turned away. “And what an idiot I am!”