est. Eminently fit
himself, capable physically in strong, clean body, mentally in cool,
calculating, single purposed brain, morally in a code of ethics which
resolved all considerations to his working theory of life, he looked
down upon other lives than his own from the passionless heights of a
supreme impudence. In most things he was unusually frank, bluntly
honest. Wanting no man to give him a place in the world which he felt
thoroughly competent to secure for himself, he curried favour nowhere,
fawned upon no one. Frankly satisfied with himself as he had made
himself, he had no desire, seeing no need, to pretend to be other than
he was. Egotism, approximating the absolute, made him careless, even
contemptuous, of the opinion of others. His mental attitude might
perhaps be likened to that of the colossally mad man of Europe, the
only man of whom he was ever known to speak in words of approval. "I
and God did this thing!" the Emperor had said. So Hume might have
said, "I and the rest of the world."

The free stride of his activities was not restricted by any form of
what he would have called squeamishness. The means were incidental,
intrinsically negligible; he justified them by the end for which he
strove. That end was unvarying. From this grew the man's power, such
as it was.

That end took him, in moments which otherwise would have been empty, to
Helga Strawn. She had made her little home cosy and comfortable, the
living room almost luxurious. She wore rare gowns, painstakingly
chosen; she kept him waiting when he called; she received him with
indifference. She seemed to grow as frank with him as he with her, and
often enough the frankness was genuine. She told him coolly at the
outset that she knew he would swindle her out of her money if he got
the chance and that he was not going to get the chance. She informed
him that she did not trust him but that that need make no difference in
their relations; if she became convinced that the project were safe she
would go into it as deeply as any one.

She treated Sledge Hume very much as he treated the rest of the world;
and she noted with keen relish that her treatment irritated him. She
already knew the man well enough to be sure that he would come again
the sooner, and more frequently, to force her by the very dominance of
his virile personality to see him as he saw himself, in a word as her
superior.

As only a very clever woman could have done sh