Cheever was half convinced and quite puzzled. He knew that Dyckman had never forgiven him for marrying Charity. The feud had smoldered. He could not conceive what should have revived it, unless Charity had been talking. He had not thought of any one's punishing him for neglecting her. But if Dyckman had enlisted in her cause--well, Cheever was afraid of hardly anything in the world except boredom and the appearance of fear. He answered Zada with a gruff: “Let him find me if he wants to. Or since you know him so well, tell me where he'll be, and I'll go find him.” He could hear Zada's strangled moan. How many times, since male and female began, have women made wild, vain protests against the battle-habit, the duel-tribunal? Mothers, daughters, wives, mistresses, they have been seldom heard and have been forced to wait remote in anguish till their man has come back or been brought back, victorious or baffled or defeated, maimed, wounded, or dead. It meant everything to Zada that her mate should not suffer either death or publicity. But chiefly her love of him made outcry now. She could not endure the vision of her beloved receiving the hammering of the giant Dyckman. The telephone crackled under the load of her prayers, but Cheever had only one answer: “If you want me to run away from him or anybody, you don't get your wish, my darling.” Finally she shrieked, “If you don't come home I'll come there and get you.” “Ladies are not allowed in the main part of this club, dearest,” said Cheever. “Thank God there are a few places where two men can settle their affairs without the help of womanly intuition.” “He wants to pound you to death,” she screamed. “If you don't promise me, I'll come there and break in if I have to scratch the eyes out of the doorkeeper.” He knew that she was capable of doing this very thing; so he made answer, “All right, my dear. I surrender.” “You'll come home?” “Yes, indeed. Right away.” “Oh, thank God! You do love me, then. How soon will you be here?” “Very shortly, unless the taxi breaks down.” “Hurry!” “Surely. Good-by!” He hung up the reverberant receiver and said to the telephone-boy: “If anybody calls me, I've gone out. No matter who calls me, I'm out.” “Yes, sir.” Then he went to the card-room, found that the game had gone on without him, cashed in his chips, and excused himself. He was neither winning nor losing, so that he could not be accused of “cold feet.” That was one of the most intolerable accusations to him. He could violate any of the Commandments, but in the sportsman's decalogue “Thou shalt not have cold feet” was one that he honored in the observance, not the breach. He went down to the reading-room, a palatial hall fifty yards long with a table nearly as big as a railroad platform, on a tremendous rug as wide and deep as a lawn. About it were chairs and divans that would have satisfied a lotus-eater.