I shall be ready, and I pray God that I may
face it properly and act like a man."

Moreover, as the years passed, and nothing happened, he felt the horror
closing in upon him with steady increase, for the fact was Jones hated
and loathed the Manager with an intensity of feeling he had never before
experienced towards any human being. He shrank from his presence, and
from the glance of his eyes, as though he remembered to have suffered
nameless cruelties at his hands; and he slowly began to realise,
moreover, that the matter to be settled between them was one of very
ancient standing, and that the nature of the settlement was a discharge
of accumulated punishment which would probably be very dreadful in the
manner of its fulfilment.

When, therefore, the chief cashier one day informed him that the man
was to be in London again--this time as General Manager of the head
office--and said that he was charged to find a private secretary for him
from among the best clerks, and further intimated that the selection
had fallen upon himself, Jones accepted the promotion quietly,
fatalistically, yet with a degree of inward loathing hardly to be
described. For he saw in this merely another move in the evolution of
the inevitable Nemesis which he simply dared not seek to frustrate by
any personal consideration; and at the same time he was conscious of a
certain feeling of relief that the suspense of waiting might soon be
mitigated. A secret sense of satisfaction, therefore, accompanied the
unpleasant change, and Jones was able to hold himself perfectly well in
hand when it was carried into effect and he was formally introduced as
private secretary to the General Manager.

Now the Manager was a large, fat man, with a very red face and bags
beneath his eyes. Being short-sighted, he wore glasses that seemed to
magnify his eyes, which were always a little bloodshot. In hot weather a
sort of thin slime covered his cheeks, for he perspired easily. His head
was almost entirely bald, and over his turn-down collar his great neck
folded in two distinct reddish collops of flesh. His hands were big and
his fingers almost massive in thickness.

He was an excellent business man, of sane judgment and firm will,
without enough imagination to confuse his course of action by showing
him possible alternatives; and his integrity and ability caused him to
be held in universal respect by the world of business and finance. In
the important regions of a