"No, you would have to put up with her to the bitter end."
"Humph!" H. P. remained silent for a while wrapped in thought. Presently he said: "There is one thing I do not understand. In the wine-shop overhead the men get very quarrelsome, others drunk, but they never kill one another."
"No. If one man killed another he would have his head cut off—here in France—unless extenuating circumstances were found. With us in England he would be hanged by the neck till he was dead."
"Then—what is your sport?"
"We hunt the fox."
"The fox is bad eating. I never could stomach it. If I did kill a fox I made my wives eat it, and had some mammoth meat for myself. But hunting is business with us—or was so—not sport."
"Nevertheless with us it is our great sport."
"Business is business and sport is sport," he said. "Now, we hunted as business, and had little fights and killed one another as our sport."
"We are not suffered to kill one another."
"But take the case," said he, "that a man has a nose-ring, or a pretty wife, and you want one or the other. Surely you might kill him and possess yourself of what you so ardently covet?"