rning her rings on her fingers, "to see
you in the role of a doting father. And may I ask how long you have had
this amiable weakness, and how long it is to last?"

To her surprise and the keen retaliating delight of her sex, a conscious
flush covered his face to the crisp edges of his black and matted beard.
For a moment she hoped that he had lied. But, to her greater surprise,
he stammered in equal frankness: "It's growed upon me for the last five
years--ever since I was alone with him." He stopped, cleared his throat,
and then, standing up before her, said in his former voice, but with a
more settled and intense deliberation: "You wanter know how long it
will last, do ye? Well, you know your special friend, Jim Stacy--the big
millionaire--the great Jim of the Stock Exchange--the man that pinches
the money market of Californy between his finger and thumb and makes it
squeal in New York--the man who shakes the stock market when he sneezes?
Well, it will go on until that man is a beggar; until he has to borrow
a dime for his breakfast, and slump out of his lunch with a cent's
worth of rat poison or a bullet in his head! It'll go on until his old
partner--that softy George Barker--comes to the bottom of his d----d
fool luck and is a penny-a-liner for the papers and a hanger-round at
free lunches, and his scatter-brained wife runs away with another man!
It'll go on until the high-toned Demorest, the last of those three
little tin gods of Heavy Tree Hill, will have to climb down, and will
know what I feel and what he's made me feel, and will wish himself in
hell before he ever made the big strike on Heavy Tree! That's me! You
hear me! I'm shoutin'! It'll last till then! It may be next week, next
month, next year. But it'll come. And when it does come you'll see me
and Eddy just waltzin' in and takin' the chief seats in the synagogue!
And you'll have a free pass to the show!"

Either he was too intoxicated with his vengeful vision, or the shadows
of the room had deepened, but he did not see the quick flush that
had risen to his wife's face with this allusion to Barker, nor the
after-settling of her handsome features into a dogged determination
equal to his own. His blind fury against the three partners did not
touch her curiosity; she was only struck with the evident depth of his
emotion. He had never been a braggart; his hostility had always been
lazy and cynical. Remembering this, she had a faint stirring of respect
for