e was in company with Offitt, an
access of jealous fury would come upon him, which found vent in
imprecations which were none the less fervid for being slowly and
haltingly uttered. The dark-skinned, unwholesome-looking Bread-winner
found a singular delight in tormenting the powerful young fellow. He
felt a spontaneous hatred for him, for many reasons. His shapely build,
his curly blond hair and beard, his frank blue eye, first attracted his
envious notice; his steady, contented industry excited in him a desire
to pervert a workman whose daily life was a practical argument against
the doctrines of socialism, by which Offitt made a part of his
precarious living; and after he had met Maud Matchin and had felt, as
such natures will, the force of her beauty, his instinctive hate became
an active, though secret, hostility. She had come one evening with
Sleeny to a spiritualist conference frequented by Offitt, and he had at
once inferred that Sleeny and she were either engaged to be married or
on the straight road toward it. It would be a profanation of the word
to say that he loved her at first sight. But his scoundrel heart was
completely captivated so far as was possible to a man of his sort. He
was filled and fired with a keen cupidity of desire to possess and own
such beauty and grace. He railed against marriage, as he did against
religion and order, as an invention of priests and tyrants to enslave
and degrade mankind; but he would gladly have gone to any altar
whatever in company with Maud Matchin. He could hardly have said
whether he loved or hated her the more. He loved her much as the hunter
loves the fox he is chasing to its death. He wanted to destroy anything
which kept her away from him: her lover, if she had one; her pride, her
modesty, her honor, if she were fancy-free. Aware of Sleeny's good
looks, if not of his own ugliness, he hated them both for the
comeliness that seemed to make them natural mates for each other. But
it was not in his methods to proceed rashly with either. He treated
Maud with distant respect, and increased his intimacy with Sleeny until
he found, to his delight, that he was not the prosperous lover that he
feared. But he still had apprehensions that Sleeny's assiduity might at
last prevail, and lost no opportunity to tighten the relations between
them, to poison and pervert the man who was still a possible rival. By
remaining his most intimate friend, he could best be informed of all
that