Wooton noticed the other's repressed agitation, and it quickened this mischief in him. "Most exactly true. Are you—can it be?—are you, h'm, jealous? My dear boy, go in and win; I clear the field. I—only harvest once." He laughed at the thought. And then, in a second, his laughter choked to a rattling gurgle in his throat.
Lancaster had sprung up, white and trembling with rage, and stood over him, squeezing the breath out of the fellow's windpipe. "You drunken, hideous hound you," he crunched from between his teeth, "you rifler of reputations, you damnable dog!" He stopped. His rage scarcely permitted words. "You're drunk, damn you, and you're a puny little brute, so I can't whip you as you should be whipped. But if you don't take that back, if you don't say you lied—I'll—give your burning head the cooling it deserves." He eased his hold on the other's throat for a time. Wooton glared at him, breathlessly, with a fantastically ugly sneer attempting lodgment on the lips that still writhed for air.
"Say you lied!" Lancaster loomed over him in tremendous wrath.
Wooton glared doggedly. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he managed to whisper. His left hand was sliding along the table to where the glass, half full of wine, stood. Suddenly he gripped it and with a wrench, splashed up the contents and the glass, full into Lancaster's face. The crystal shattered on the artist's chin, fortunately, and so did but little harm. Before the crash of the breaking glass was stilled, and the wine spent, Lancaster's hands were about the other's throat again; he gave a swing, viciously, and flung the body completely over the low railing.
It splashed into the still waters noisily. The swans swam away for a moment, then returned in curiosity. As Wooton came to the surface, he screamed out an oath and a cry for help. There was a boatman at the water-steps of the adjoining café, and in a few minutes he had pulled the choking man out of the water.
Wooton glared up to where Lancaster stood, still hot with anger. "Damn him," he thought, "if he were not so much stronger than I—" But the thought prevailed, and he told the boatman to row further down the canal.
To the waiters who had rushed up, Lancaster had been very cool. "Es handelt sich um eine Wette" he assured them. The whole thing had been so swift, so silent, that up to the moment of the splash in the water, there had been no eye-witnesses. He smiled at the waiters, paying his bill, and leaving a liberal trinkgeld. "Mein freund hat die wette gewonnen." Then he sauntered out with a final fierce glance in the direction of the boat that was turning the corner in the far distance, bearing away the scoundrelisms that lived in Wooton.
When he reached the marble circle of the fountain in the gardens of Sans-souci, Lancaster stopped, and addressed the spray, bitterly: "So that was why I was refused? Well, well! It seems, as I said a little while ago, that there are still new emotions in store for me." He watched the spray turn to mist that was almost invisible. "That is the way with ideals," he mused. Then he turned with a laugh in the direction of the terraces. "How absurd he looked, in the water!" He went on, laughing quietly.