Ridgway's laugh had a touch of affectionate contempt. "Don't cross
bridges till you get to them, Steve. Haven't you discovered, man, that
the bold course is always the safe one? It's the quitter that loses out
every time. The strong man gets there; the weak one falls down. It's as
invariable as the law of gravity." He got up and stretched his broad
shoulders in a deep breath. "Now for Mr. Harley. Send him in, Eaton."

That morning Simon Harley had done two things for many years foreign to
his experience: He had gone to meet another man instead of making the
man come to him, and he had waited the other man's pleasure in an outer
office. That he had done so implied a strong motive.

Ridgway waved Harley to a chair without rising to meet him. The eyes of
the two men fastened, wary and unwavering. They might have been jungle
beasts of prey crouching for the attack, so tense was their attention.
The man from Broadway was the first to speak.

"I have called, Mr. Ridgway, to arrange, if possible, a compromise. I
need hardly say this is not my usual method, but the circumstances are
extremely unusual. I rest under so great a personal obligation to you
that I am willing to overlook a certain amount of youthful
presumption." His teeth glittered behind a lip smile, intended to give
the right accent to the paternal reproof. "My personal obligation--"

"What obligation? I left you to die in the snow.',

"You forget what you did for Mrs. Harley."

"You may eliminate that," retorted the younger man curtly. "You are
under no obligations whatever to me."

"That is very generous of you, Mr. Ridgway, but--"

Ridgway met his eyes directly, cutting his sentence as with a knife.
"'Generous' is the last word to use. It is not a question of generosity
at all. What I mean is that the thing I did was done with no reference
whatever to you. It is between me and her alone. I refuse to consider
it as a service to you, as having anything at all to do with you. I
told you that before. I tell you again."

Harley's spirit winced. This bold claim to a bond with his wife that
excluded him, the scornful thrust of his enemy--he was already
beginning to consider him in that light rather than as a victim--had
touched the one point of human weakness in this money-making
Juggernaut. He saw himself for the moment without illusions, an old man
and an unlovable one, without near kith or kin. He was bitterly aware
that the child he had married had been