fierce, unreasoning resentment against Diane.

"Fool!" said Carl. "One mad, eloquent lie of love and she would have
softened. Women are all like that. Tell me," Carl stared whimsically
into his glass as if it were a magic crystal of revelation, "why is it
that when I am scrupulously honest no one understands? . . . Why that
mad stir of love-hunger to-night as Diane stood in the doorway? Why
the swift black flash of hatred now? Are love and hatred then akin?"

The clock struck three. Carl's brain, flaming, keen, master of the
bottle save for its subtle inspiration of wounded pride and resentment,
brooded morosely over Diane, over the defection of his parasitic
companions, over the final leap into the abyss of parsimony and Diane's
flash of contempt at the mention of his mother. Half of Diane's money
was rightly his--his mother's portion. And he could love vehemently,
cleanly, if he willed, with the delicate white fire which few men were
fine enough to know. . . . In the soft hollow of Diane's hand had lain
the destiny of a man who had the will to go unerringly the way he
chose. . . . Love and hunger--they were the great trenchant appetites
of the human race: one for its creation, the other for its
perpetuation. . . . To every man came first the call of passion; then
the love-hunger for a perfect mate. The latter had come to him
to-night as Diane stood in the doorway, a slender, vibrant flame of
life keyed exquisitely for the finer, subtler things and hating
everything else.

Still he drank, but the fires of hell were rising now in his eyes.
There was treachery in the bottle. . . . Diane, he chose to fancy, had
refused him justice, salvation, respect to the memory of his
mother! . . . So be it! . . . His to wrench from the mocking,