"You damn dirty thief, you … Steal women, do you?" Vance saw him squaring himself for another blow, and his own fighting instinct flamed up. By this time Bunty's denunciations had summoned the slender staff of The Hour to the outer office. The typewriter girl wailed, "It's a holdup," but the men laughed and reassured her… . "Let 'em alone—it's their funeral," Vance heard, as Bunty's fist leapt out at him again. His own was raised to parry it. He was the lighter and swifter, and he was sober—he had all the advantages. His arm dropped, and he drew back against the wall. "Better go home now—I'll see you wherever you want," he said, his hands in his pockets, the welt of his first blow spreading up his cheek like fire.

"Ho, a coward too, are you? Standing there to take your licking as if you were sitting for your portrait? I'll make a portrait of you, by God… . See me do it, boys… ."

Tarrant's door opened and he came out. He was very pale, and his thin lips were drawn together in a narrow line of disdain.

"Weston—what's all this? I'll thank you to do your fighting elsewhere… ."

Bunty Hayes broke into a rusty laugh. "Fighting? He won't fight. This is a licking he's going to get… ." Somebody echoed the laugh, and Tarrant's cold eyes turned again to Vance. "Do you know this man?"

"Yes," said Vance.

"Know me? God, that's the trouble with him. And I've given him a chance at a stand-up fight, and he won't take it. That so?" he challenged Vance. Vance, his hands in his pockets, repeated: "That's so." He saw the disdain on Tarrant's lips turn to contempt, and his blood leapt up again. But inwardly he still knew that, even if Hayes had been completely sober, he would not have fought him.

Tarrant turned toward the intruder. "You get out of here," he said.

"Get out of here? I'll see you to hell first—I'll … "

Eric Rauch, who had not been in the office, came running up the stairs. He glanced about the group, bewildered, and turned to Vance. "What's up?" he asked. Bunty shouted back: "He's taken my girl and he won't fight me for her," and there was another snicker among the lookers-on. It was manifest that sympathy was veering away from Vance.

Vance felt Rauch's luminous eyes rest curiously and not unkindly on his white face with the burning welt. Rauch smiled a little and put his hand on Hayes's arm. "If you'll step this way," he said, with a faint wink at the spectators, "I'll take you down to my private office, and you can tell me what it's all about." He drew Hayes across the threshold, with a quick sign to the office boy to follow. But Hayes had already collapsed—the tears were running down his face, and he was putting his arm about Rauch's neck as the door closed on them.