y as bailee. It
did not matter that he charged George W. Stener with embezzlement at the
same time. Cowperwood was the scapegoat they were after.

Chapter XXXIV

The contrasting pictures presented by Cowperwood and Stener at this
time are well worth a moment's consideration. Stener's face was
grayish-white, his lips blue. Cowperwood, despite various solemn
thoughts concerning a possible period of incarceration which this hue
and cry now suggested, and what that meant to his parents, his wife
and children, his business associates, and his friends, was as calm and
collected as one might assume his great mental resources would permit
him to be. During all this whirl of disaster he had never once lost his
head or his courage. That thing conscience, which obsesses and rides
some people to destruction, did not trouble him at all. He had no
consciousness of what is currently known as sin. There were just two
faces to the shield of life from the point of view of his peculiar
mind-strength and weakness. Right and wrong? He did not know about
those. They were bound up in metaphysical abstrusities about which he
did not care to bother. Good and evil? Those were toys of clerics,
by which they made money. And as for social favor or social ostracism
which, on occasion, so quickly followed upon the heels of disaster of
any kind, well, what was social ostracism? Had either he or his parents
been of the best society as yet? And since not, and despite this present
mix-up, might not the future hold social restoration and position for
him? It might. Morality and immorality? He never considered them. But
strength and weakness--oh, yes! If you had strength you could protect
yourself always and be something. If you were weak--pass quickly to the
rear and get out of the range of the guns. He was strong, and he knew
it, and somehow he always believed in his star. Something--he could
not say what--it was the only metaphysics he bothered about--was doing
something for him. It had always helped him. It made things come out
right at times. It put excellent opportunities in his way. Why had he
been given so fine a mind? Why always favored financially, personally?
He had not deserved it--earned it. Accident, perhaps, but somehow
the thought that he would always be protected--these intuitions,
the "hunches" to act which he frequently had--could not be so easily
explained. Life was a dark, insoluble mystery, but whatever it was,
strength an