aching; I behaved deplorably.

"I am a gentleman, and," he said with intense emphasis, "I thought I
was in the company of GENTLEMEN."

"Don't!" I gasped faintly. "Oh, don't!"

"Curious, nicht wahr?" I heard him say to Soames. "There
is a type of person to whom the very mention of my name is--oh, so
awfully--funny! In your theaters the dullest comedien
needs only to say 'The devil!' and right away they give him 'the loud
laugh what speaks the vacant mind.' Is it not so?"

I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted
them, but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.

"I am a man of business," he said, "and always I would put things
through 'right now,' as they say in the States. You are a poet. Les
affaires--you detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh?
What you have said just now gives me furiously to hope."

Soames had not moved except to light a fresh cigarette. He sat
crouched forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his head just
above the level of his hands, staring up at the devil.

"Go on," he nodded. I had no remnant of laughter in me now.

"It will be the more pleasant, our little deal," the devil went on,
"because you are--I mistake not?--a diabolist."