ollow with
ambition, his eyes lit up. He seemed to tower over immense perspectives;
and, from that height, Trampy appeared to him so small, so small, so
really small that he felt his anger decrease. And then there was Lily! To
send Trampy to his wife with a black eye or a bloody nose, to turn the
husband into an object of ridicule to his wife, that was impossible for
him; it would have shown lack of respect for Lily, poor darling; he would
not humiliate her in her man! She loved him, perhaps, in the illusion of
her seventeen years! Hurt _her_? Never! Jimmy wiped the episode from the
slate; hard as it was, he forgave that highway robber, in the name of his
dead love.

Ah, if he could have seen Lily when Trampy was driven to confess his
discomfiture to her! He would have been revenged offhand! Lily seethed
with rage against her husband, that footy rotter! What! Was that his great
scheme? Did he call that an idea? How often had not Jimmy spoken to her
about it! It was pinned on the wall, it lay about in the Gresse Street
workshop for months. She remembered seeing the plans, the diagrams, the
drawings in the papers. Jimmy had explained everything to her at the time
when he was still a josser. And Trampy had stolen it from him, stolen it,
stolen it! Oh, he would make her die of shame!

It was a terrible dispute, a real "playing humanity," with threats,
clenched fists, broken crockery strewing the floor.

"To humiliate me like that before Jimmy!" said Lily, furious.

"Drop that about Jimmy!" snarled Trampy, green with jealousy. "I won't
have you mention him!"

"I shall mention him if I like! Jimmy is a son of a gun! Very well! But
he's a man! He's worth two of you."

Trampy strode up to her with his fist raised.

"If you touch me," cried Lily, seizing the lamp, "if you touch me, I'll
smash it over your head!"

CHAPTER IV

When Trampy received the visit of the _Gerichtsdiener_, with the bill of
costs to pay--for the Kolossal sued the Kaiserin for damages and the
Kaiserin came down upon Trampy--when Trampy learned that, he became a limp
rag. Already he saw himself dragged before the courts, his whole past laid
bare: two wives on his hands, for all he knew; Lily crushing him with her
scorn; Jimmy triumphant.

Trampy had a moment of real despair. Lily preferred him like that, humbled
at her feet. She seemed to understand her husband, a man spoiled by easy
conquests, a boozer, a rake, who had taken too much upo