"You are ill, sir?" asked my old servant, my old friend, as he took the
note.

"Stay with her, Sanders, as long as she wishes," said I, ignoring his
question. "Then come to me."

His look made me shake hands with him. As I did it, we both remembered the
last time we had shaken hands--when he had the roses for my home-coming
with my bride. It seemed to me I could smell those roses.

XXXII. LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE

I shall not estimate the vast sums it cost the Roebuck-Langdon clique
to maintain the prices of National Coal, and so give plausibility to
the fiction that the public was buying eagerly. In the third week of my
campaign, Melville was so deeply involved that he had to let the two others
take the whole burden upon themselves.

In the fourth week, Langdon came to me.

The interval between his card and himself gave me a chance to recover from
my amazement. When he entered he found me busily writing. Though I had
nerved myself, it was several seconds before I ventured to look at him.
There he stood, probably as handsome, as fascinating as ever, certainly as
self-assured. But I could now, beneath that manner I had once envied, see
the puny soul, with its brassy glitter of the vanity of luxury and show.
I had been somewhat afraid of myself--afraid the sight of him would stir
up in me a tempest of jealousy and hate; as I looked, I realized that
I did not know my own nature. "She does not love this man," I thought.
"If she did or could, she would not be the woman I love. He deceived her
inexperience as he deceived mine."

"What can I do for you?" said I to him politely, much as if he were a
stranger making an untimely interruption.

My look had disconcerted him; my tone threw him into confusion. "You keep
out of the way, now that you've become famous," he began, with a halting
but heroic attempt at his customary easy superiority. "Are you living up in
Connecticut, too? Sam Ellersly tells me your wife is stopping there with
old Howard Forrester. Sam wants me to use my good offices in making it up
between you two and her family."

I was completely taken aback by this cool ignoring of the real situation
between him and me. Impudence or ignorance?--I could not decide. It seemed
impossible that Anita had not told him; yet it seemed impossible, too, that
he would come to me if she had told him. "Have you any _business_ with
me?" said I.

His eyelids twitched nervously, and he adjusted his lips several