sic-room on the second floor. He had caught the tigerish cruelty
and power-lust in the eyes of Mary's brother, and he knew that for their
satisfaction someone must pay very dear.

Paul sat at the piano as they entered the music-room and the emotions
which he expressed upon the keys were emotions of deep unrest. They ran
in strains of folklore plaintiveness and rhythmic sobs of wailing
cadences. When Mary spoke the musician turned with a start. He had not
heard their entrance.

"I didn't know we should find you here, Paul."

He nodded as he rose from the instrument. "Hamilton asked me to wait,"
he explained. "He's having some tremendously important conference--and
after a trying fight he always likes me to play for him."

The three sat for a time unaccustomedly silent. Mary could not forget
the impression of those conquered faces, and Edwardes, with the same
thought, forebore from comment. Within a half-hour Hamilton himself
joined them. His eyes were glowing beacons of triumph and his lips wore
a smile of victory.

"Tonight I have met and defeated Malone's attempt to crush me," he
announced with a half-savage elation. "Tomorrow the financial world will
recognize in me the actual and unchallenged head of Coal and Ore." Then,
turning to Jefferson, he added: "You know what that signifies,
Edwardes."

The visitor nodded, but no words of enthusiastic congratulation came to
his tongue. "It means," he replied slowly, "that you hold a mightier
financial power than any other business man in New York."

"And now that you have all that," Mary put the question slowly and
gravely, "to what use will you put it?"

Hamilton bent upon her a gaze of tense visioning and his answer came in
rapt eagerness: "To build a greater structure of power than any man
before me has ever reared."

After a moment's pause he went on: "Edwardes, have you no word of
congratulation? It was you who first kindled my dreams into a blaze, you
know."

The visitor spoke with his eyes fixed on those of the man who had
outgrown him in financial stature and become a Colossus.

"I was thinking of that," he responded, "and I was wondering at what
cost you had won this victory."

"Conquest," retorted Hamilton Burton shortly, "can take no thought of
cost."

"I wonder!" Edwardes spoke reflectively; then with a straightforward
honesty he went on: "It rather seems to me that once in a great while
there rises in the world a marvel-man. To such a spirit the