, "finding that the Man of
Destiny can't always fight with confetti and the blowing of kisses, you
grow faint-hearted."

"Put it as you like, Mr. Burton.... All I know is that, after today, I
should no longer feel proud.... I should feel like an accomplice in
crime."

Hamilton Burton laughed. It was a short and not a pleasant laugh.

"Please yourself. To me no man is indispensable. Good-night."

Mary did not wait for Paul. As she drove up-town with the physician, she
had in her ears the shouts of newsboys heralding the death of Jefferson
Edwardes--and other deaths.

When she was in her own bed they mercifully gave her something which
smoothed her brain into the black velvet softness of sleep. The future
must tell whether her body and mind could ever be brought back to the
harbor of health.

* * * * *

Hamilton Burton's lights burned late that night in his office, and up to
them many baleful glances turned from the sidewalks below. The financier
told himself that he was the same man that he had been, safeguarded by
his star; but as he worked he found himself instinctively turning to the
chair where Carl Bristoll should be and where now sat a more inept
subordinate. Each such moment brought its tiny stab at his pride and
self-assurance, and the brain which he must concentrate kept straying to
the disquieting vision of a grief-maddened girl leaning against the
wall, with her fingers twitching in little groping gestures as her lips
rained accusation. Today he had made a panic, but between the opening
and closing peals of tomorrow's gong each hour must be filled with the
most exact and brilliant maneuverings.

All day today he had borne down the market on a scale unprecedented. All
day tomorrow he must be in a position to reap the harvest he had
sown--else he might find himself the victim of a trap which he had
prepared, at a mighty cost, for others. No one knew so well as he how
even his colossal strength had been strained with the titanic effort of
pushing apart the masonry of the temple's pillars.

He had no doubts of the morrow, but these troubling remembrances came
blurringly across the crystal of his brain.

Abruptly he took up his telephone and rang his house number. "Yamuro,"
he said when he heard the sibilant, quaintly distorted voice of the
Japanese from the other end, "ask Mr. Paul to wait for me there until I
come in." Paul's music should soothe him.

"'Scuse, please,"