facts from me."

Flamel received this in silence. The other's outbreak seemed to
have reinforced his self-control, and when he spoke it was with a
deliberation implying that his course was chosen. "In that case I
understand still less--"

"Still less--?"

"The meaning of this." He pointed to the check. "When you began to speak
I supposed you had meant it as a bribe; now I can only infer it was
intended as a random insult. In either case, here's my answer."

He tore the slip of paper in two and tossed the fragments across the
desk to Glennard. Then he turned and walked out of the office.

Glennard dropped his head on his hands. If he had hoped to restore his
self-respect by the simple expedient of assailing Flamel's, the result
had not justified his expectation. The blow he had struck had blunted
the edge of his anger, and the unforeseen extent of the hurt inflicted
did not alter the fact that his weapon had broken in his hands. He
saw now that his rage against Flamel was only the last projection of a
passionate self-disgust. This consciousness did not dull his dislike of
the man; it simply made reprisals ineffectual. Flamel's unwillingness to
quarrel with him was the last stage of his abasement.

In the light of this final humiliation his assumption of his wife's
indifference struck him as hardly so fatuous as the sentimental
resuscitation of his past. He had been living in a factitious world
wherein his emotions were the sycophants of his vanity, and it was with
instinctive relief that he felt its ruins crash about his head.

It was nearly dark when he left his office, and he walked slowly
homeward in the complete mental abeyance that follows on such a crisis.
He was not aware that he was thinking of his wife; yet when he reached
his own door he found that, in the involuntary readjustment of his
vision, she had once more become the central point of consciousness.

XIII

It had never before occurred to him that she might, after all, have
missed the purport of the document he had put in her way. What if, in
her hurried inspection of the papers, she had passed it over as related
to the private business of some client? What, for instance, was to
prevent her concluding that Glennard was the counsel of the unknown
person who had sold the "Aubyn Letters." The subject was one not likely
to fix her attention--she was not a curious woman.

Glennard at this point laid down his fork and glanced at her between t