crept through his
limbs. A vertiginous faintness brought him half tumbling and half
rolling back into his chair, wheezing and moist with sweat. He sat
there looking about him, like a sheep killer looking up from the ewe it
has captured.

Then his great chest heaved and shook with hysterical sobbing. When, a
little later, he heard the shaken woman's antiphonal sobs, the
realization of how low he had fallen kept him from looking at her. A
great shame possessed him. He stumbled out of the room. He groped his
way down to the open streets, a haggard and broken man from whom life
had wrung some final hope of honor.

XIX

No catastrophe that was mental in its origin could oppress for long a
man so essentially physical as Blake. For two desolate hours, it is
true, he wandered about the streets of the city, struggling to medicine
his depression of the mind by sheer weariness of the body. Then the
habit of a lifetime of activity reasserted itself. He felt the need of
focusing his resentment on something tangible and material. And as a
comparative clarity of vision returned to him there also came back
those tendencies of the instinctive fighter, the innate protest against
injustice, the revolt against final surrender, the forlorn claim for at
least a fighting chance. And with the thought of his official downfall
came the thought of Copeland and what Copeland had done to him.

Out of that ferment of futile protest arose one sudden decision. Even
before he articulated the decision he found it unconsciously swaying
his movements and directing his steps. He would go and see Copeland!
He would find that bloodless little shrimp and put him face to face
with a few plain truths. He would confront that anemic
Deputy-Commissioner and at least let him know what one honest man
thought of him.

Even when Blake stood before Copeland's brownstone-fronted house, the
house that seemed to wear a mask of staid discretion in every drawn
blind and gloomy story, no hesitation came to him. His naturally
primitive mind foresaw no difficulties in that possible encounter. He
knew it was late, that it was nearly midnight, but even that did not
deter him. The recklessness of utter desperation was on him. His
purpose was something that transcended the mere trivialities of
every-day intercourse. And he must see him. To confront Copeland
became essential to his scheme of things.

He went ponderously up the brown stone steps an