. He resumed the interrupted
conversation; he was telling Wetter how he could make money out of
music, and then more music out of the money, then more money out of the
music, and so on, in an endless chain of music and money, money and
music, money, music, money. Wetter sat looking at him with a smile of
malicious mockery.

"Happy man!" he cried suddenly. "You love only two things in the world,
and you've married both."

Struboff pulled his whisker meditatively.

"Yes, I have done well," he said, and drained his glass. "But hasn't
Coralie done well too? Where would she have been but for me?"

"Indeed, my dear Struboff, there's no telling, but I suppose in the arms
of somebody else."

"Your own, for example?" growled the husband.

"Observe the usual reticences," said Wetter, with a laugh. "My dear
Baron, Struboff mocks my misery by a pretended jealousy. You can
reassure him. Did Madame Mansoni ever favour me?"

"I can speak only of what I know," I answered, smiling. "She never
favoured you before me."

He caught the ambiguity of my words, and laughed again. Struboff turned
toward me with a stare.

"You also knew my wife?" he asked.

"I had the honour," said I. "In Forstadt."

"In Forstadt! Do you know the king?"

"Not so well as I could wish," I answered. "About as well as I know
Wetter here."

"That's admirably well!" cried Wetter. "Well enough not to trust me."

The fat man looked from one to the other of us in an obtuse suspicion of
our hilarity.

"The king admired my wife's talents," said he. "We intend to visit
Forstadt next year."

"Do you?" said I, and Wetter's peal broke out again.

"The king will find my wife's talent much increased by training,"
pursued Struboff.

"Damn your wife's talent!" said Wetter, quite suddenly. "You talk as
much about it as she does of your beauty."

"I hope madame is well?" I interposed quickly and suavely, for Struboff
had grown very red and gave signs of temper. Wetter did not allow him to
answer. He sprang to his feet and dragged Struboff up by the arm.

"Take his other arm!" he cried to me. "Bring him along. Come, come,
we'll all go and see how madame is."

"It's nearly eleven," remonstrated Struboff sourly. "I want to go to
bed."

"You? You go to bed? You, with your crimes, go to bed? Why, you couldn't
sleep! You would cower all night! Go to bed! Oh, my dear Struboff, think
better of it. No, no, we'll none of us go to bed. Bed's a hell for men
like u