"I'm looking for trouble," returned Blake, quietly. He advanced to the table and leaned against it. "Jack," he exclaimed, "you're a damned fool. There was some excuse for the others. Parmalee was a kid--Rogers an old fool--Van Dam--well, absinthe and asininity account for him. And they fell to their fooldom without warning to guard them or precedent to shield them. But you--open-eyed, knowing everything--forewarned and forearmed,--walk fatuously to your doom as one sheep follows another over a precipice. I swear I can't even yet believe that it isn't all a dream. I keep pinching myself and saying to myself that in the morning I'll wake up and go around and tell old Jack all about it as being a good joke. It's an uncanny, filthy sort of a nightmare as it stands, however." He turned to the other; Schuyler was striding up and down the room. "Old man," he pleaded, quietly, "what's the answer?" Schuyler stopped in his walk. Looking at Blake, he remarked: "You've never loved. You couldn't know." "Never loved!" cried Blake, scornfully. "Couldn't know! Hell! You make me tired! What do you mean by debauching and degrading a good, pure word like love by applying it to this snaky, bestial fascination of yours. You're a fool!" Schuyler advanced upon him, threateningly. "Don't you call me that, too," he said, tensely. Blake paid no heed. "Love!" he cried, disgustedly. "This sordid, sodden passion of yours love! Love lives only where there is sympathy, and respect, and mutual understanding. Do you mean to tell me that you have any respect for this woman? You know well you haven't a bit more respect for her than she has for you, and that's none. Do you mean to tell me there's any sympathy between you? No more than there is between a snake and a bird. And you aren't capable of understanding her any more than she is of understanding you. Love! It's lust! And you know it!" Schuyler had dropped into a chair. Blake finished. He swung toward him. "Go on!" he almost hissed, through clenched teeth. "Go on! If you can tell me anything that I haven't told myself, I'd like to hear it. Tell me what you think. Tell me what everyone thinks. Put into words the scorn and contempt that I see in every eye that looks into mine--in every mirror that I look into. Go on! Tell me something else! But let me tell you one thing! When Destiny can't get a man any other way, she sends a woman for him.... And the woman gets him." Blake looked at him. "'A fool there was';" he quoted. Schuyler interrupted. "Stop!" he commanded. "Don't you suppose I know that thing by heart-- every syllable--every letter of it? Don't you suppose I know what it means--all that it means--better than you can ever know?" He struck his forehead with clenched fist. "Tell me the things that lie here!" his voice was almost a scream. "The things that lie here, and burn, and burn, and burn! Tell me the things that lie here!" He struck his forehead again.