_la
bas_, was taking a new lease of life.

"I _did_ think," I said, "a little time ago that ..."

The wheels of the coupe suddenly began to rattle abominably over the
cobbles of a narrow street. It was impossible to talk, and I was thrown
back upon myself. I found that I was in a temper--in an abominable
temper. The sudden sight of that man, her method of greeting him, the
intimacy that the scene revealed ... the whole thing had upset me. Of
late, for want of any alarms, in spite of groundlessness I had had the
impression that I was the integral part of her life. It was not a
logical idea, but strictly a habit of mind that had grown up in the
desolation of my solitude.

We passed into one of the larger boulevards, and the thing ran silently.

"That de Mersch was crumbling up," she suddenly completed my unfinished
sentence; "oh, that was only a grumble--premonitory. But it won't take
long now. I have been putting on the screw. Halderschrodt will ... I
suppose he will commit suicide, in a day or two. And then the--the fun
will begin."

I didn't answer. The thing made no impression--no mental impression at
all.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

That afternoon we had a scene, and late that night another. The memory
of the former is a little blotted out. Things began to move so quickly
that, try as I will to arrange their sequence in my mind, I cannot. I
cannot even very distinctly remember what she told me at that first
explanation. I must have attacked her fiercely--on the score of de
Mersch, in the old vein; must have told her that I would not in the
interest of the name allow her to see the man again. She told me things,
too, rather abominable things, about the way in which she had got
Halderschrodt into her power and was pressing him down. Halderschrodt
was de Mersch's banker-in-chief; his fall would mean de Mersch's, and so
on. The "so on" in this case meant a great deal more. Halderschrodt,
apparently, was the "somebody who was up to something" of the American
paper--that is to say the allied firms that Halderschrodt represented.
I can't remember the details. They were too huge and too unfamiliar, and
I was too agitated by my own share in the humanity of it. But, in sum,
it seemed that the fall of Halderschrodt would mean a sort of incredibly
vast Black Monday--a frightful thing in the existing state of public
confidence, but one which did not mean much to me. I forget how she said
she had been able to put the screw