the extent of the difference.
To both of us, money and the indulgence it buys meant everything in
life. All I can boast of is the longer sight. The office-hours were a
nuisance, I admit: but I was clever enough to keep my hold on the old
set; and then, after office-hours, I met you constantly, and studied and
hated you--studied you because I hated you. Elaine came between us.
You fell in love with her. That I, too, should fall in love with her
was no coincidence, but the severest of logic. Given such a woman and
two such men, no other course of fate is conceivable. She made it
necessary for me to put hate into practice. If she had not offered
herself, why, then it would have been somebody else: that's all.
Good Lord!" he rapped the table, and his voice rose for the first time
above its level tone of exposition, "you don't suppose all my study--
all my years of education--were to be wasted!"

He checked himself, eyed me again, and resumed in his old voice--

"You wanted money by this time. I was a solicitor--your old college
friend--and you came to me. I knew you would come, as surely as I knew
you would not fire that pistol just now. For years I had trained myself
to look into your mind and anticipate its working. Don't I tell you
that from the first you were the only real creature this world held for
me? You were my only book, and I had to learn you: at first without
fixed purpose, then deliberately. And when the time came I put into
practice what I knew: just that and no more. My dear Reggie, you never
had a chance."

"Elaine?" I muttered again.

"Elaine was the girl for you--or for me: just that again and no more."

"By George!" said I, letting out a laugh. "If I thought that!"

"What?"

"Why, that after ruining me, you have missed being happy!"

He sighed impatiently, and his eyes, though he kept them fastened on
mine, seemed to be tiring. "I thought," he said, "I could time your
intelligence over any fence. But to-night there's something wrong.
Either I'm out of practice or your brain has been going to the deuce.
What, man! You're shying at every bank! Is it drink, hey? Or hunger?"

"It might be a little of both," I answered. "But stay a moment and let
me get things straight. I stood between you and Elaine--no, give me
time--between you and your aims, whatever they were. Very well.
You trod over me; or, rather, you pulled me up by the roots and pitched
me into outer darkness to rot.