step before her
ireful figure.

"And because he's old and unpopular I should not attack him, eh?" he
demanded. "Because he's down, I should not hit him? That's your
woman's reasoning, is it? Well, let me tell you," and his gray eyes
flashed, and his voice had a crunching tone--"that I believe when
you've got an enemy of society down, don't, because you pity him, let
him up to go and do the same thing again. While you've got him down,
keep on hitting him till you've got him finished!"

"Like the brute that you are!" she cried. "But, like the coward you
are, you first very carefully choose your 'enemy of society.' You were
careful to choose one who could not hit back!"

"I did not choose your father. He thrust himself upon the town's
attention. And I consider neither his weakness nor his strength. I
consider only the fact that your father has done the city a greater
injury than any man who ever lived in Westville."

"It's a lie! I tell you it's a lie!"

"It's the truth!" he declared harshly, dominantly. "His swindling
Westville by giving us a worthless filtering-plant in return for a
bribe--why, that is the smallest evil he has done the town. Before
that time, Westville was on the verge of making great municipal
advances--on the verge of becoming a model and a leader for the small
cities of the Middle West. And now all that grand development is
ruined--and ruined by that man, your father!" He excitedly jerked a
paper from his pocket and held it out to her. "If you want to see
what he has brought us to, read that editorial in the _Clarion_!"

She fixed him with glittering eyes.

"I have read one cowardly editorial to-day in a Westville paper. That
is enough."

"Read that, I say!" he commanded.

For answer she took the _Clarion_ and tossed it into the waste-basket.
She glared at him, quivering all over, in her hands a convulsive itch
for physical vengeance.

"If I thought that in all your fine talk about the city there was one
single word of sincerity, I might respect you," she said with slow and
scathing contempt. "But your words are the words of a mere poseur--of
a man who twists the truth to fit his desires--of a man who deals in
the ideas that seem to him most profitable--of a man who cares not how
poor, how innocent, is the body he uses as a stepping stone for his
clambering greed and ambition. Oh, I know you--I have watched you--I
have read you. You are a mere self-seeker! You are a demagogue! You
are a