re the hot, passionate eyes of a man obsessed, of a man possessed
of a monomania. Peterman, watching, beheld the sudden change in him. He
shrank before the insanity he had so deeply probed.

Hellbeam sat forward in his chair. His forearms were resting on the
desk, and his hands were clenched so that the finger-nails almost cut
into the flesh of their palms. His massive face was flushed, and the
coarse veins at his temples stood out like cords.

"Here, I tell you," he cried gutturally, returning in his fury to the
native Teuton in him. "Can you hate--yes? Have you known hate? Eh? No.
You the white liver have. You cannot hate. It is not in you. Oh, no. It
is for me. Yes. It has been so for years. And I tell you it is the only
thing in life. Woman? No. I have known them. They mean little. They are
a pleasure that passes. Money? What is it when you play the market as
you choose? The day comes when you can help yourself. And you no longer
desire so to do. Hate? That lives. That feeds on body and brain. That
consumes till there is only a dead carcase left. Ah! Hate is for the
lifetime. It can leave all those others as nothing. In it there is joy,
despair, all the time, every hour of life."

He held up one hand and opened his fingers. Then he slowly closed them
with a curious expressive movement of ruthless destruction.

"You hate and you think. You see your vengeance in operation. You see
him there in your hand; and you see the blood sweat as you squeeze and
crush out the life that has offended. Man, it is a joy that never leaves
you till you accomplish this thing. Then, after, you have the memory.
And while you think, even though he is dead, smashed in your grip, he
still suffers as you think. Oh, yes."

"And you hate--that way?"

A feeling of sudden fear had taken possession of Peterman. This gross,
squat man had become something terrible to him.

"Ja!"

The Teuton leapt in the furious emphasis hurled.

"Oh, ja! I hate. I tell you of it."

The man with the insane eyes picked up a pen. He turned it about in his
fingers. Then, suddenly, but slowly, the fingers began to break it. The
wood split under their pressure, and the pieces littered the table. He
gazed at them for a moment. Then one hand clenched and came down with a
crash on the blotting pad. Then he sat back in his chair again, with his
cruel eyes gazing straight out at the window opposite.

"It is years now. Oh, yes." A deep breath escaped from between th