"Stop there!" Anthony Fry cried savagely. "Do you mean that I brought this woman here deliberately? Do you mean that I _knew_?" "Knew!" Johnson Boller jeered. "Then I tell you that you're an infernal ass, sir, and I decline to defend myself!" Anthony snarled fiercely. "You! You lovesick fool and your crazy imagination! You're too much in love to reason, but--what about _me_?" "Well, what about you?" Johnson Boller sneered. "I," said Anthony, "have borne the reputation of a decent man! No women have ever been in this apartment before, save one or two relatives! No woman of any description has ever passed the night here before. And yet now, when this infernal thing has happened, your poor addled wits--oh, bah! Bah, sir!" "Don't bah at me!" Mr. Boller said dangerously, although not quite so dangerously, because Anthony's emotion had carried its own conviction. Then, for a little, these two old friends stood and trembled and glared at each other, Johnson Boller contemplating a swift and terrible uppercut to Anthony's lean jaw, which should stretch him unconscious perhaps for hours--Anthony meanwhile wondering superheatedly whether, once his long fingers had wound about Johnson Boller's plump throat, he could hold on until wretched life was extinct. They were angry, terribly angry and almost for the first time in their lives, and had they stood and glared for another fifteen seconds it is possible that one or the other might have ended his days in Sing Sing's electric chair--but as it happened Mary's voice came upon the vibrating, pregnant air, clear and cool and full of warranted acerbity. "While all this talk of reputations is going on," said Mary, "what about mine?" Anthony Fry's tension snapped. Johnson Boller, it seemed, was of no mind to relinquish his rare fury so easily, for he stood with his fists clenched and trembled a little even now and his color was no lighter than scarlet; but Anthony turned and bowed almost humbly. "I beg your pardon, Miss Mary," he said bitterly. "Miss Mary!" echoed Boller. "You know her, hey?" "She told me to call her Mary," Anthony said stiffly. "When? When you hired her for this job?" Johnson Boller persisted, although quite weakly. "When I discovered--not half an hour back--that she was--er--what she is," Anthony said coldly. "And let that be an end to your comments, please. You saw me meet this young woman for the first time, as you will know when you recover your senses. You know for what purpose and under what misapprehension I brought her to this apartment. Don't make a bad matter worse by injecting your personal brand of asininity." He turned his back on Johnson Boller and walked away. Johnson Boller, however, turned his whole attention to Mary, perched on the arm of a chair, distressed enough but self-contained, pretty as a picture. And slowly reason climbed upon her throne again in Johnson Boller's brain, possessed though it was by Beatrice, loveliest of wives.