Boulte raised his head and said slowly, 'Oh, you liar!' Kurrell's face
changed. 'What's that?' he asked quickly.

'Nothing much,' said Boulte. 'Has my wife told you that you two
are free to go off whenever you please? She has been good enough
to explain the situation to me. You've been a true friend to me,
Kurrell old man haven't you?'

Kurrell groaned, and tried to frame some sort of idiotic sentence
about being willing to give 'satisfaction.' But his interest in the
woman was dead, had died out in the Rains, and, mentally, he was
abusing her for her amazing indiscretion. It would have been so
easy to have broken off the thing gently and by degrees, and now
he was saddled with Boulte's voice recalled him.

'I don't think I should get any satisfaction from killing you, and I'm
pretty sure you'd get none from killing me.'

Then in a querulous tone, ludicrously disproportioned to his
wrongs, Boulte added

''Seems rather a pity that you haven't the decency to keep to the
woman, now you've got her. You've been a true friend to her too,
haven't you?'

Kurrell stared long and gravely. The situation was getting beyond
him.

'What do you mean?' he said.