fists suddenly closed and Bivens took a step back
toward his desk when his slender hand gripped and fumbled a heavy cut
glass ink stand. The older observed his trembling hand with a smile of
contempt.

"And I swore," Bivens went on in a voice quivering with unrestrained
passion, "that when you looked up into my face grovelling and whining
for mercy as you have to-night, I'd call my servants and order them to
kick you down my door step."

He loosed his hold on the ink stand and leaned across the massive
flat-top desk to touch an electric button.

The doctor's fist suddenly gripped the outstretched hand and his eyes
glared into the face of the financier with the dangerous look of a
madman.

"You had better not ring that bell, yet," he said, with forced quiet in
his tones.

Bivens hesitated and his muscles relaxed in the grip on his wrist.

"You wish to prolong the agony for another moral discussion?" the
financier asked with a sneer. "All right, if you enjoy it."

"Just long enough to say one thing to you, Bivens. There's a limit
beyond which you and your kind had better not press the men you have
wronged. You have made a brave show of your power to-night. Well, you
are mistaken if you believe you can longer awe the imagination of the
world with its tinsel. You have begun to stir deeper thoughts. Look to
your skin. I've always said this is God's world, and it must come out
right in the end. I've begun to think to-night there's something wrong.
God can't look down and see what's going on here--the God I've tried to
serve and worship, whose praise I have sung beneath the stars on fields
of battle with the blood streaming from wounds I got fighting for what
I believed to be right. If the devil rules the universe, and
dog-eat-dog is the law, there'll be a big hand feeling for your throat,
feeling blindly in the dark, perhaps, but it will get there! When I
look into your brazen face to-night, and hear the strains of that
music, there's something inside of me that wants to kill."

"But you won't, Woodman!" Bivens interrupted with a sneer.

"When it comes to the test your liver is white. I know your breed of
men, but I like you better in that mood. It gives me pleasure to
torture you, and I'm not going to kick you out."

"I shouldn't advise you to try it," was the grim response.

"No. Your tirade gives me an idea. I want you to stay until the
festivities end, and enjoy yourself. Observe that I'm pouring out my
weal