"Don't want my letter?
Oh, very good!" he bristled up.

He took his cigarette from his lips, and blew the smoke through his nostrils, and then looked at Fulkerson.
"No; I don't want your letter; I want you." Beacon disdained to ask an explanation, but he internally lowered his crest, while he continued to look at Fulkerson without changing his defiant countenance.

This suited Fulkerson well enough, and he went on with relish, "I'm going out of the syndicate business, old man, and I'm on a new thing." He put his leg over the back of a chair and rested his foot on its seat, and, with one hand in his pocket, he laid the scheme of 'Every Other Week' before Beaton with the help of the other.

The artist went about the room, meanwhile, with an effect of indifference which by no means offended Fulkerson.

He took some water into his mouth from a tumbler, which he blew in a fine mist over the head of Judas before swathing it in a dirty cotton cloth; he washed his brushes and set his palette; he put up on his easel the picture he had blocked on the day before, and stared at it with a gloomy face; then he gathered the sheets of his unfinished letter together and slid them into a drawer of his writing-desk.