‘She is good,—he is bad,—is it not so?’

He touched first one scrap of paper, then the other. I stared.

‘Pray how do you happen to know?’

‘He shall never have her,—eh?’

‘What on earth do you mean?’

‘Ah!—what do I mean!’

‘Precisely, what do you mean? And also, and at the same time, who the devil are you?’

‘It is as a friend I come to you.’

‘Then in that case you may go; I happen to be overstocked in that line just now.’

‘Not with the kind of friend I am!’