"Cheerful lot of friends we've made in this town!" he said bitterly.
"What is the matter with them?" she persisted.
"The matter is they've taken me for a fool they could order around to suit themselves. They found they couldn't. Now they're through with me, even Cal Bennett," he added in a lower tone that revealed his hurt.
She paused, biting her underlip.
"Is the trouble anything to do with this Cora case?" she asked, suddenly enlightened by some vague, stray recollection.
"Of course!" he replied crossly, exasperated at the nagging necessity of arousing himself to explanations. "There's no use arguing about it. I'm going to see it through in spite of that hound McDougall and his whole pack of curs!"
"But why have you turned so against your friends?" she asked more gently, struck by his careworn look as he sprawled in the easy chair under the lamp. "I don't see! You'll get yourself disliked!"
She did not press the matter further for the moment, but three days later she brought up the topic again. In the interim she had heard considerable direct and indirect opinion. She selected after dinner as the most propitious time for discussion. As a matter of fact, earlier in the day would have been better, before Keith's soul had been rubbed raw by downtown attrition.
"I don't believe you quite realize how strongly people feel about the Cora case," she began. "Isn't it possible to drop it or compromise it or something, Milton?"
In the reaction from argument and—coldness downtown he felt he could stand no more of it at home.