"I beg your pardon?" Lancaster started savagely. He thought he might not have heard aright.
The other blandly continued. "I said 'Dear Dorothy!' That was her name, you know. Her name is almost as sweet as her kisses. Dorothy" he lingered over the syllables--"Dorothy Ware."
"What!" Lancaster half sprung up from his chair. Then he curbed himself, with intense efforts, to calmness. "Did I understand you to say that it was Miss Dorothy Ware?"
"Certainly, my dear boy. Most correct. Oh, yes; remember now: friend of your's. Recommend your taste, my boy, I really do. She--"
"Look here!" Lancaster's voice had grown hard and chill. "Do you mean to say that--all that--is true?"
Wooton noticed the other's repressed agitation, and it quickened this mischief in him. "Most exactly true. Are you--can it be?--are you, h'm, jealous? My dear boy, go in and win; I clear the field. I--only harvest once." He laughed at the thought. And then, in a second, his laughter choked to a rattling gurgle in his throat.
Lancaster had sprung up, white and trembling with rage, and stood over him, squeezing the breath out of the fellow's windpipe. "You drunken, hideous hound you," he crunched from between his teeth, "you rifler of reputations, you damnable dog!" He stopped. His rage scarcely permitted words. "You're drunk, damn you, and you're a puny little brute, so I can't whip you as you should be whipped. But if you don't take that back, if you don't say you lied--I'll--give your burning head the cooling it deserves." He eased his hold on the other's throat for a time. Wooton glared at him, breathlessly, with a fantastically ugly sneer attempting lodgment on the lips that still writhed for air.
"Say you lied!" Lancaster loomed over him in tremendous wrath.
Wooton glared doggedly. "I shall do nothing of the sort," he managed to whisper. His left hand was sliding along the table to where the glass, half full of wine, stood. Suddenly he gripped it and with a wrench, splashed up the contents and the glass, full into Lancaster's face. The crystal shattered on the artist's chin, fortunately, and so did but little harm. Before the crash of the breaking glass was stilled, and the wine spent, Lancaster's hands were about the other's throat again; he gave a swing, viciously, and flung the body completely over the low railing.