"I'll stay, Mr. Tompkins," she said. "And here's a pick-me-up I mixed for you. Better drink it before you see the Rutherfords." "Okay!" And I drank it and it worked its beneficent will upon me. "Now I'll go and kill Dr. Rutherford, if you'll toss me my flit-gun and, thanks!" Dr. Rutherford was pacing, with surgical precision, up and down my den. He looked slightly more self-possessed than the day before and seemed to be in excellent physical condition. I guessed at the contour beneath my wadded black silk dressing gown and re-considered my original plan to throw him bodily out of the house for having come without my invitation. "See here, Tompkins," he said briskly. "We're both men of the world, I hope. Things can't go on like this. I was up all night with Virginia. You're not behaving at all well, you know, old man." I sat down in the corner of the leather lounge and looked up at him--a move which gave me a slight advantage of position in dealing with the higher emotions. "Let's not mince words, Jerry," I said. "Suppose you just state frankly what you think we should do." "Germaine loves me and does not love you," Rutherford stated crisply. "You love Virginia and she loves you. None of us wish a divorce. Hang it all, Winnie, we're civilized. These things happen, you know, and we might just as well face them. We agreed that the four of us should do as we liked, and no hard feelings." I sighed. "Jerry," I said. "What you say was true as of yesterday noon but if these things can happen, they can also un-happen. Whatever you and my wife decide to do is your own affair but I'm damned if I intend to allow her to use my home as a place of assignation and I'm damned if I'll let her become the subject of gossip. So far as Virginia is concerned, whether or not she is in love with me, I'm no longer in love with her and I'm damned if I'll play gigolo to spare the feelings of a bulging red-head who carries the torch for anything in trousers, up to and including scarecrows--myself included." "I can't allow you to talk that way about my wife, Tompkins. It's rotten bad form and anyhow we both know that people are the way their glands make them and nothing can be done about it." "Here, have a drink!" I suggested. "This is all under the seal of a confessional. I'm not quarreling with you. I'm consulting you. I don't love Virginia and I don't believe I ever did. If you wish to wriggle out of your marriage, that's your affair." "And it's yours, too, ever since that night at the War Bond Ball," he said. "Don't forget that I caught you--" "Rutherford," I replied. "As a medical man you have surely seen far worse than that. You can't sue me for alienation of affections, because all Bedford Hills is aware of Virginia's glands and because it wouldn't help your practice. For the rest, I'm willing to listen to anything as a way out of this mess."