ave. Never before, however,
had he pitted himself against a force that strong men will not take
seriously because it is never to be logically reckoned with.
Nevertheless, that force must, sooner or later, be acknowledged by every
human being. Michael Gregoriev especially should have taken it into
consideration long before; for it was many years since he began his
preparations for what last night was to have brought him: a place in the
last unconquered world of power. His preparation, however, had led him
only through ways peopled by men: and for men and their deeds he was
more than a match. Their caprices, their follies, their faithlessness,
their treachery even, he had learned long since to calculate and to cope
with. Women, also, he had known: many women; experienced, innocent,
negative, or wicked. And those who had ventured upon his ground, he had
not failed to conquer. It was in the knowledge of these experiences that
he had stood; by its light preparing a _coup_ that was to carry the last
fortress of that upper world which still held out against him: that
peculiar body of women and men called "society."

Years before, with this same purpose in his mind, he had married a
daughter of this class, whose only dower was her birth, and whose only
covetable possession her place among her kind. And this effort had
failed, entirely. Sophia Blashkov, a quiet, gentle, blue-blooded, little
debutante, had found herself utterly unequal to the task either of
forcing a place in those glittering, scornful ranks for her
black-blooded, much-condemned husband, or of keeping her own, now that
she bore his name. True, her marriage had, probably, made possible her
younger sister's exceptional and unhoped-for match. But Michael himself
felt that he had sadly bungled a most important affair. Perceiving his
wife's uselessness for his purpose, all the little admiration he had
ever had for the fragile girl changed speedily into an angry despite.
For the moment, he put her and his social ambitions away together, and
turned back to that world of official intrigue and promotion which had
actually occupied him from that distant time until within the last few
weeks. The old defeat had long since been buried under a heap of newly
gained official honors. But of these, alas! he had now had his fill. For
the first time he was tasting to the full a measure of bitterness as
rank as any the world has to offer. For there is something in the
deliberate reje