done. Come to me tomorrow, and we'll talk about it."

"That is all I wished to know," said I. And, with a friendly, easy
smile, I put out my hand. "Good-night."

It was his turn to be astonished--and he showed it, where I had given
not a sign. "What was the report you heard?" he asked, to detain me.

"That you and Mowbray Langdon had conspired to ruin me," said I,
laughing.

He echoed my laugh rather hollowly. "It was hardly necessary for you
to come to me about such a--a statement."

"Hardly," I answered, dryly. Hardly, indeed. For I was seeing now all
that I had been hiding from myself since I became infatuated with
Anita, and made marrying her my only real business in life.

We faced each other, each measuring the other. And as his glance
quailed before mine, I turned away to conceal my exultation. In a
comparison of resources this man who had plotted to crush me was to me
as giant to midget. But I had the joy of realizing that man to man, I
was the stronger. He had craft, but I had daring. His vast wealth
aggravated his natural cowardice--crafty men are invariably cowards,
and their audacities under the compulsion of their insatiable greed
are like a starving jackal's dashes into danger for food. My wealth
belonged to me, not I to it; and, stripped of it, I would be like the
prize-fighter stripped for the fight. Finally, he was old while I was
young. And there was the chief reason for his quailing. He knew that
he must die long before me, that my turn must come, that I could dance
upon his grave.

As I drove away, I was proud of myself. I had listened to my death
sentence with a face so smiling that he must almost have believed me
unconscious; and also, it had not even entered my head, as I listened,
to beg for mercy. Not that there would have been the least use in
begging--as well try to pray a statue into life as try to soften that
set will and purpose. Still, another sort of man than I would have
weakened, and I felt--justly, I think--proud that I had not weakened.
But when I was once more in my apartment--in _our_ apartment--perhaps
I did show that there was a weak streak through me. I fought against
the impulse to see her once more that night; but I fought in vain. I
knocked at the door of her sitting room--a timid knock, for me. No
answer. I knocked again, more loudly--then a third time, still more
loudly. The door opened and she stood there, like one of the angels
that guarded the gates of Eden after