in a locked chamber,
struggling with her grief.

"Oh, it is hopeless, hopeless!" said the poor girl to herself, over and
over again. "Florian, my darling Florian, whom I found blind and
wandering in the wilderness, and took by the hand and guided to the
light--Florian has gone from me! She has taken him, just as she took
him before. But the man she thinks loves her--her Eugene--I'm sure
he's coming to love me; and to be tired of her! And I could keep him
Brassfield, if I chose--if I chose! I wonder--I wonder if it would be
wrong? What would she do if she had my power? Twice I had to try,
before I could restore him. I could! I could!"

Small wonder, therefore, that Madame le Claire sat wild-eyed and
excited, and flew fearfully to Judge Blodgett and the professor, when
Mr. Brassfield went free, with Alderson at heel. And all the time, as
the crew of a ship carry on the routine of drill while the torpedo is
speeding for her hull, these social amenities went on all unconscious
of the explosion now imminent.

XV

THE TURPITUDE OF BRASSFIELD

Man to black Misfortune beckons
When upon himself he reckons,
Marshals Faith among his assets,
Blinks his nature's many facets.
This dull gem is an ascetic,
Bloodless, pulseless, apathetic:
Shift the light--a trifling matter--
Fra Anselmo turns a satyr!
--_The Kaleidoscope_.

Airily, Mr. Brassfield preceded his clerk down the stairway, and out
into the street. There, something in the air--the balm of advancing
spring; a faint chill, the Parthian shot of retreating winter; some
psychic apprehension of the rising sap; the slight northing of the sun;
or some subconscious clutch at knowledge of minute alterations in the
landscape--apprised Mr. Brassfield's strangely circumscribed mind of
the maladjustment with time resulting from the reign of Amidon. But
however bewildered Florian's mentality might become at such things, it
was different with Brassfield. The plane of consciousness in which he
had so long moved, with a memory running back five years and there
ending in a blank wall of nescience, had made him cunning and
shifty--necessarily so. The struggle for existence had had its
inevitable effect--the faculty paralyzed had been compensated for by
the development of others. So he was not at all at a loss now, when
this little hiatus in time struck on his mind in the form of a
suspicion. He turned to Alderson with a smile.

"