greedy octopus. I will go abroad and so escape
Worthington's vengeance, and Ferris' duplicity."

He began to secretly watch every one of the leading New York officials
of the company in order to detect Ferris' successor in the hidden
watch upon his movements.

It was with a secret longing for the coming Monday of the breakfast
that Clayton passed Lilienthal's window, three days after Jack's
sailing, in company with the grave-featured Robert Wade. His runaway
heart was all unsuspicious now.

Thank Heaven! There was no longer the graceful woman lingering there
fascinated by the picture whose sunset glories lit up in gold and
purple the lonely man's rooms. But the suave dealer, waiting at
his door, salaamed with effusion as the manager passed. His salute
distantly included Clayton, and the action was not lost upon Robert
Wade.

"Do you know Lilienthal?" somewhat sharply asked Wade.

"Not at all," carelessly answered the younger man. "I happened
to drop in and buy a bit of a landscape from him the other day. He
mentioned when I gave him my cheque that you occasionally patronized
him."

"He is a rare art connoisseur," musingly said Wade, "and I've picked
up a few pretty bits of etching now and then at his shop. You must
come up and see my collection some day."

Clayton, busied with his day dreams, did not notice the sudden
paleness of the pompous manager. In his own ignorance of the mysteries
of the "private room" and its secret "facilities for patrons," he
never dreamed that the man at his side was "light of foot, fierce
at heart" as the tiger when he stole to the rendezvous arranged
by Lilienthal, who had indeed offered many "choice bits" to the
astute manager. Clayton had stumbled along in New York, blinded to
its dual existence, its gilded shams.

"I will never set foot in that place again," remarked Clayton, as
he strode alone down University Place to the bank. "Lilienthal must
never know of my further acquaintance with the Fraeulein."

And so, each keeping his own secret hugged closely to an anxious
heart, the two men went along on their different paths, each drawn
along by the invisible threads of life--the one dragged on by a
sudden romantic, resistless passion, the other by the glowing links
of the iron chains of habit, the ruling appetite of a remorseless
lust. And yet both of them were only blinded fools of passion.

The dragging days until the trysting time for the breakfast were
filled up wit