ould
he knock Meadows down? That is not just the form it took in his mind.
Any rowdy or a policeman may knock a man down. Your man of fashion, when
he wishes to punish an enemy or have an affray with a friend, only
"punches his head." It is a more precise phrase, and has no boast in it.
No one knows which may go down, but the aggressor feels sure that he can
begin by punching his enemy's head. Millard was on the point of rising
and punching Meadows's head in the most gentlemanly fashion. But he
reflected that a head-punching affray with Meadows in the club-room
would make Phillida and her cures the talk of the town, and in
imagination he saw a horrible vision of a group of newspaper reporters
hovering about Mrs. Callender's house, and trying to gain some
information about the family from the servant girl and the butcher boy.
To protest, to argue, to say anything at all, would be but an awful
aggravation. Having concluded not to punch the head of a bank director,
he rose from the table himself, and, avoiding Meadows's notice, beckoned
the waiter to serve his coffee in the reading-room. When he had
swallowed the coffee he rose and went out. As he stood in the door of
the club-house and buttoned up his coat, a cabman from the street
called, "Kerrige, sir?" but not knowing where he should go, Millard
raised his umbrella and walked. Mechanically he went toward Mrs.
Callender's. He had formed no deliberate resolution, but he became aware
that a certain purpose had taken possession of him all uninvited and
without any approval of its wisdom on his part. Right or wrong, wise or
unwise, there was that which impelled him to lay the condition of
things before Phillida in all its repulsiveness and have it out with
her. He could not think but that she would recoil if she knew how her
course was regarded. He fancied that his own influence with her would be
dominant if the matter were brought to an issue. But these
considerations aside, there was that which impelled him to the step he
was about to take. In crises of long suppressed excitement the sanest
man sometimes finds himself bereft of the power of choosing his line of
action; the directing will seems to lie outside of him. It is not
strange that a Greek, not being a psychologist, should say that a Fate
was driving him to his destiny, or that his Daemon had taken the helm and
was directing affairs as a sort of _alter ego_.

When at length Millard found himself in front of Mrs. Ca