rd and unlocked it. As Billy passed through, Charley,
looking sharply in his face, said hoarsely: "By Heaven, I believe you're
not worth it!" Then he shut the door again and locked it.

He almost ran back and opened the cupboard. Taking out the bottle of
liqueur, he filled a glass and drank it off. Three times he did this,
then seated himself at the table with a sigh of relief and no emotion in
his face.

CHAPTER VII. "PEACE, PEACE, AND THERE IS NO PEACE"'

The sun was setting by the time Charley was ready to leave his office.
Never in his life had he stayed so late in "the halls of industry," as
he flippantly called his place of business. The few cases he had won so
brilliantly since the beginning of his career, he had studied at night
in his luxurious bedroom in the white brick house among the maples on
the hill. In every case, as at the trial of Joseph Nadeau, the man who
murdered the timber-merchant, the first prejudice of judge and jury had
given way slowly before the deep-seeing mind, which had as rare a power
of analysis as for generalisation, and reduced masses of evidence to
phrases; and verdicts had been given against all personal prejudice--to
be followed outside the court by the old prejudice, the old look askance
at the man called Beauty Steele.

To him it had made no difference at any time. He cared for neither
praise nor blame. In his actions a materialist, in his mind he was a
watcher of life, a baffled inquirer whose refuge was irony, and whose
singular habits had in five years become a personal insult to the
standards polite society and Puritan morality had set up. Perhaps the
insult had been intended, for irregularities were committed with an
insolent disdain for appearances. He did nothing secretly; his page
of life was for him who cared to read. He played cards, he talked
agnosticism, he went on shooting expeditions which became orgies, he
drank openly in saloons, he whose forefathers had been gentlemen of
King George, and who sacrificed all in the great American revolution for
honour and loyalty--statesmen, writers, politicians, from whom he had
direct inheritance, through stirring, strengthening forces, in the
building up of laws and civilisation in a new land. Why he chose to be
what he was--if he did choose--he alone could answer. His personality
had impressed itself upon his world, first by its idiosyncrasies and
afterwards by its enigmatical excesses.

What was he thinking of as he