For a moment he did not know whether to be relieved or dismayed
at the prospect of Mrs. Condor for an enemy. How much would she really
dare?
He thought with a lowering anger of Flint. He had been ready to concede
everything but this former friend in the role of a cheap and nasty
gossip. No--gossip was a pale, sickly term. Flint was a malignant toad,
a nauseous mud-slinger, a deliberate liar. He had heard of men who had
justified themselves with vile tales to their insipid, disgustingly
virtuous wives, but he had not counted such among his acquaintances. By
the side of Flint, Lily Condor loomed a very paragon of the social
amenities.
Stillman was conscious that his mental process was keyed to the highest
pitch of melodrama. It was not usual for him to indulge in mental abuse.
He had never quite understood the dark and moving processes of red-eyed
anger. There had been something absurd in the theatrical hauteur of his
manner in this last scene with Mrs. Condor--that is, if it were measured
by his own standards. His growing detachments from life had claimed him
almost to the point of complete indifference. But now, suddenly, as if
Fate had dealt him an insulting blow upon the face with her bare palm,
he felt not only rage, but a sense of its futility, its impotence.
"Flint!" he thought again. And immediately he spewed forth the memory of
this man in a flood of indiscriminate epithets.
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