(_Emphatically_). It is intolerable. Don't you think you had better leave this house? Every moment of your presence dishonors it. {Margaret} Don't talk of honor, Tom. {Chalmers} I make no excuses for myself. I fancy I never fooled you very much. But at any rate I never used my own house for such purposes. {Knox} (_Springing at him._) You cur! {Margaret} (_Interposing._) No; don't. His heart. {Chalmers} (_Mimicking Margaret._) No dramatics, please. {Margaret} (_Plaintively, looking from one man to the other._) Men are so strangely and wonderfully made. What am I to do with the pair of you? Why won't you reason together like rational human beings? {Chalmers} (_Bitterly gay, rising to his feet._) Yes; let us come and reason together. Be rational. Sit down and talk it over like civilized humans. This is not the stone age. Be reassured, Mr. Knox. I won't brain you. Margaret-- (_Indicating chair,_) Sit down. Mr. Knox-- (_Indicating chair._) Sit down. (_All three seat themselves, in a triangle._) Behold the problem--the ever ancient and ever young triangle of the playwright and the short story writer--two men and a woman. {Knox} True, and yet not true. The triangle is incomplete. Only one of the two men loves the woman. {Chalmers} Yes? {Knox} And I am that man. {Chalmers} I fancy you're right. (_Nodding his head._) But how about the woman? {Margaret} She loves one of the two men. {Knox} And what are you going to do about it? {Chalmers} (_Judicially._) She has not yet indicated the man. (_Margaret is about to indicate Knox._) Be careful, Madge. Remember who is Tommy's father. {Margaret} Tom, honestly, remembering what the last years have been can you imagine that I love you? {Chalmers} I'm afraid I've not--er--not flamed sufficiently. {Margaret} You have possibly spoken nearer the truth than you dreamed. I married you, Tom, hoping great things of you. I hoped you would be a power for good-- {Chalmers} Politics again. When will women learn they must leave politics alone? {Margaret} And also, I hoped for love. I knew you didn't love me when we married, but I hoped for it to come. {Chalmers} And--er--may I be permitted to ask if you loved me? {Margaret} No; but I hoped that, too, would come. {Chalmers} It was, then, all a mistake. {Margaret} Yes; yours, and mine, and my father's. {Knox} We have sat down to reason this out, and we get nowhere. Margaret and I love each other. Your triangle breaks. {Chalmers} It isn't a triangle after all. You forget Tommy. {Knox} (_Petulantly._) Make it four-sided, then, but let us come to some conclusion. {Chalmers} (_Reflecting._) Ah, it is more than that. There is a fifth side. There are the stolen letters which Madge has just this morning restolen from her father. Whatever settlement takes place, they must enter into it.