n't care what you are!" I cried. "I want you! I want you!"

"Fool!" you are saying. Precisely what I called myself. And you? Is it
the one you _ought_ to love that you give your heart to? Is it the
one that understands you and sympathizes with you? Or is it the one whose
presence gives you visions of paradise and whose absence blots out the
light?

I loved her. Yet I will say this much for myself: I still would not have
taken her on any terms that did not make her really mine.

XXXIV. "MY RIGHT EYE OFFENDS ME"

Now that Updegraff is dead, I am free to tell of our relations.

My acquaintance with him was more casual than with any other of "The
Seven." From the outset of my career I made it a rule never to deal with
understrappers, always to get in touch with the man who had the final say.
Thus, as the years went by, I grew into intimacy with the great men of
finance where many with better natural facilities for knowing them remained
in an outer circle. But with Updegraff, interested only in enterprises west
of the Mississippi and keeping Denver as his legal residence and exploiting
himself as a Western man who hated Wall Street, I had a mere bowing
acquaintance. This was unimportant, however, as each knew the other well
by reputation. Our common intimacies made us intimates for all practical
purposes.

Our connection was established soon after the development of my campaign
against the Textile Trust had shown that I was after a big bag of the
biggest game. We happened to have the same secret broker; and I suppose it
was in his crafty brain that the idea of bringing us together was born. Be
that as it may, he by gradual stages intimated to me that Updegraff would
convey me secrets of "The Seven" in exchange for a guarantee that I would
not attack his interests. I do not know what his motive in this treachery
was--probably a desire to curb the power of his associates in industrial
despotism.

Each of "The Seven" hated and feared and suspected the other six with far
more than the ordinary and proverbial rich man's jealous dislike of other
rich men. There was not one of them that did not bear the ever-smarting
scars of vicious wounds, front and back, received from his fellows; there
was not one that did not cherish the hope of overthrowing the rule of Seven
and establishing the rule of One. At any rate, I accepted Updegraff's
proposition; henceforth, though he stopped speaking to me when we happened
to meet, a