ng 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 ravenous 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, I 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.

XXV. "MY WIFE MUST!"

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,
many a man would have weakened--and 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 the
fall. Only, instead of a flaming sword, hers was of ice. She was in a
dressing-gown or tea-gown, white and clinging and full of intoxicating
hints and glimpses of all the beauties of her figure. Her face softened as
she continued to look at me, and I entered.

"No--please don't turn on any more lights," I said, as she moved toward the
electric buttons. "I just came in to--to see if I could do anything for
you." In fact, I had come, longing for her to do something for me, to show
in look or tone or act some sympathy for me in my loneliness and trouble.

"No, thank you," she said. Her voice seemed that of a str